The Return
by dharmamonkey
Summary: England 1559. Elizabeth I has just been crowned queen. Booth has renounced his priestly vows and returned to England to seek out Brennan after their brief affair unexpectedly ended only to find out things have changed dramatically in his absence. How will the pair cope, especially with the pressures of court intrigue pulling them in opposite directions? Sequel to "The Inquisitor."
1. Prologue: An Epilogue Rewound

**The Return**

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**By:** dharmamonkey & Lesera128  
**Rated: **M  
**Disclaimer: **So, we're still here, and by now, we know as well as you do that we don't own anything. However, we are looking into ways to take control of this sandbox via adverse possession. ::blinks:: Okay, not really. But, you get the gist.

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**Summary: **England. 1559. Elizabeth I has just been crowned queen. Seeley Booth has renounced has priestly vows and returned to England to seek out Temperance Brennan after their brief affair unexpectedly ended only to find out things have changed dramatically in his absence. How will the pair cope, especially with the pressures of court intrigue pulling them in opposite directions? Very, very AU. Sequel to "The Inquisitor."

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**A/N: **_A few months ago when we posted the conclusion to "The Inquisitor," we know we said that everyone should look for the sequel to post under _**Lesera128**_'s profile. However, for several reasons we won't bore you all with, we changed our minds and decided to keep both stories under _**dharmamonkey**_'s profile even though both pieces of work, like all Dharmasera stories, are very much collaborations of both writers in every sense of the word._

**UNF Alert**: _Not necessary at this point, but eventually, later chapters may contain content of the UNF variety. Sensitive readers and readers whose moms and dads would rather they not be reading that sort of thing should take note. The fruit of this fanfic doesn't fall far from the "The Inquisitor" tree._

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**Prologue: An Epilogue Rewound**

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The cold, damp wind blew off the Channel and bit hard at Seeley Booth's cheeks as he gazed across the water at the chalk-white cliffs of the Kentish coast, which glittered under the rare, shallow-angled winter sun as they sat a mere twenty-one miles in the distance. It had been just over the span of six months since he sailed from England and stepped off the merchant vessel onto the quay at Calais, his heart heavy with a sadness that he did not, at that point, completely understand. But he'd known even then that he'd never be able to shake the image of Mistress Temperance Brennan's face—and her entrancing blue-gray eyes—from his mind...even if he wanted to, which, as more and more time had passed, was the one thing he could definitely say he didn't ever want to do.

As he stared at the coast, Booth sighed, his warm breath streaming from his nostrils and falling as a cold vapor on his upper lip. Another gust of cold wind, flecked with salty spray, blew off the sea as he cautiously nudged his horse closer to the edge of the bluff. The waves of the roiling sea crashed hard and angrily against the rocks at the base of the cliff. Booth's dapple gray mare snorted in frustration, her thick, white breath puffing from her nose as she stubbornly twisted against the bridle, clomping her hooves against the dry sea grass as she twirled around and away from the edge of the bluff.

"Easy, girl," he whispered to her, reaching up with one hand and pulling his thick burgundy woolen cloak more tightly around his shoulders as he fisted the reins tightly in the other. "There's not much more to our journey, I promise you. With any luck, in the next day or two, I'll sell you for a silver _franc _or _deux _to a horse broker at the port, and you'll be on your way to a gentler pasture than I've been able to give you."

Booth took another deep breath as he turned the mare back to face the sea once more, noting her willingness to respond to the light touch of the rein to her neck now that they were several feet away from the edge of the bluff. She was an excellent horse, bred from Camargue stock with a healthy infusion of Arabian blood, as evidenced by the mare's refined facial structure and clean, tight throatlatch, solid hindquarters and a particularly strong gaskin, and a generally calm, steady temperament. But, Booth noted with a smirk, she was clearly a product of the Burgundian plains from which she'd come since it was very apparent she was unaccustomed to being ridden near cliffs of any kind.

He hunched his shoulders as he leaned over the saddle and turned his head slightly into the hood of his cloak as yet another gust of wind railed against him. The cold made his nose run and his eyes water, and he reached up, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, then looked at the streaks left on the soft black calfskin as he rested his hands on the pommel. He shook his head as he thought of the number of nights he'd laid in his bed—at first, a borrowed bed in one of twenty-odd different friaries he stopped at along his thousand-mile ride from Calais all the way through France and over the Pennine Alps into Italy before finally arriving at the Vatican, five weeks after leaving England. Then, later, it had been a bed assigned to him in the friary at the Dominican complex adjacent to the Basilica di Santa Sabina all'Aventino in Rome. Each night, no matter where he'd been, he'd often fallen asleep shedding silent tears as he struggled to make sense of all that had happened to him in the weeks since he had met Brennan.

But, as time had passed, he'd come to realize that as the weeks turned to months that his eyes had welled up with tears in the dark of night not simply because of how his well-ordered life had been so suddenly upended by this woman. No, the ache and sad loneliness he felt was more keen because he felt the pain of her absence from his life. One morning, quite simply, he came to realize that he'd missed her. He missed Brennan. He missed her terribly, missed her so much he felt an ache in his chest every time he thought of her. And the missing nearly overwhelmed him to the point that he was miserable.

In all his life, he'd never had felt this way about anyone, not even when his parents had sent him away to the monastery at the tender age of twelve. Booth had made friends and formed bonds with people throughout the course of his life's journey—among the boys he'd studied with at the Benedictine priory in Kent to the universities in Padua and Paris, during his time as a well-regarded _doctor legis _in the curiae in Rome, and even after his return to England, among the Dominican brethren who were his colleagues and with whom he worked after his appointment to the office of Inquisitor by Reginald de la Pole, the Archbishop of Canterbury. But now, in the months since he'd been forced to leave Brennan behind in the short-term so that they might have something together in the long-term of a future he hoped to fashion with her, all of that seemed so strange to him—that life that he'd known before _her. _It didn't feel familiar or comforting, as it once had. Instead, it felt foreign and strange, and as he sat that January morning atop his restless steed on the bluff at Cap Gris Nez, he felt both anxious and excited that he was finally so close to leaving it all behind.

He was a single boat ride away from finally going home, and leaving everything that had separated them behind. He would find Brennan, and he was going to make a new home with her wherever she wanted him to settle. It didn't matter where they went, or what they did, as long as they were together.

Cardinal Pole—Booth's benefactor and longtime mentor, the man who had sent him to Rome as his personal messenger—was dead, as was Queen Mary, who'd died childless of the very cancer that Pole had mentioned the last time he and Booth spoke in his office at Lambeth Palace. Pole had died on the 17th of November, and word of his death—and the death of Mary, who'd escaped the mortal coil of this world just a scant twelve hours before Pole did—made its way to the Vatican within a few weeks thereafter, carried to Rome on a merchant vessel carrying English wool into the port of Civitavecchia. Booth was in the Vatican Library, reading a thirteenth-century treatise on falconry, _De arte venandi cum avibus_, when another Dominican brother had come into the library with the news.

At hearing word of his mentor's unexpected passing, Booth had been inundated with a flood of emotions: sadness at knowing that he'd never again enjoy the company of the man whom he'd admired since the early days of Booth's studies at Padua, nervousness at what Pole's and Mary's deaths meant for the future of the Holy Church in England, and happy (if somewhat guilty) excitement in knowing that Pole's passing meant might set in motion the process by which he would be released from his vows and dispatched back to England. Although Booth knew such feelings of _schadenfreude _constituted the sin of sin of _delectatio morosa_, he couldn't help but feel that the news of Pole's and Mary's passings marked a new and blessed beginning for him, even if it did not bode well for the Church itself.

In the days following the news of Pole's death, Booth learned that Cardinal Pole kept his promise to him. Booth glanced down at his feet in the stirrups with a faint smile and noted how strange it still seemed to wear pants, a tunic and a vest with his tall black leather riding boots—the normal clothes of a layman—instead of the white linen robe and black hooded cloak that he wore every day for the ten years he was a member of the _Ordo Praedicatorum, _the Dominican Order of Preachers. Those clothes he'd shed in Rome, along with the initials and titles that together had made him Father Seeley Booth, O.P. Now, granted a dispensation by the Holy Father himself releasing him from his vows as a priest and a mendicant brother, he was merely Seeley Joseph Booth, an ordinary man.

As he looked out on the bright chalk cliffs across the Channel, Booth was reminded of the way Pope Paul IV's fine white robes had shimmered in the bright sunlight on the morning when he'd been called before the Holy Father to be dispensed of his sacred vows. The old Italian pope seemed tired—his features drawn, his eyes framed by dark circles, his cheeks sunken and his hand unsteady—as he placed his palm on the crown of Booth's head as he'd granted the dispensation and had given Booth his blessing.

"_Though you are hereby released from your vows, as has been requested by our recently dearly departed brother, Cardinal Pole," the old Pope told Booth, "you must be steadfast in your faith and never waver in your love of God's Holy Church. The Lord's work lives on in the hearts of the men and women who nourish their faith each day, steeled against the shifting winds that howl around them. No matter how you serve God in this world, my son, you must always remember that and strive to hold true to such an important belief."_

At dawn the following day, Booth began the long journey home, the Pope's words echoing in his mind as he rode north, praying that the mild winter would hold and allow him to reach Paris by Epiphany.

Forcing himself to concentrate on the present, Booth let his mind fall away from his memories of what he hoped would be his last visit to the Eternal City and the literal bosom of the Holy Mother Church. He looked up once more at the glimmering white cliffs in the distance and wondered if she had waited for him—if she had believed him when he wrote in his hastily-penned letter that he would return for her—indeed, if she still wanted him, which he hoped and prayed for, despite having had no contact with her in the six months since he had left her cell at the Dominican house in Westminster. His heart ached more and more each day he went without contact with her but he knew that, for her sake as well as his, he could not risk exposing them by trying to get word to her lest his actions inadvertently possibly jeopardize his one clear chance at happiness with her.

He swallowed and crossed himself, mouthing a silent prayer in the hope that he would find her when he returned, and that they would be able to pick up and resume the thing that had flourished between them—whatever it was that they, a brilliant young inquisitor and the accused witch and heretic whom he was charged with adjudging, had cultivated between them—now that the chasm of circumstances that separated them was now changed. He was an ordinary layman, no longer bound by the vows of chastity that made their affair illicit and, so long as he remained a priest, condemned her to being no more than his mistress, and she was free, cleared of the wrongfully-laid charges of witchcraft. He closed his eyes and thought of her, remembering how beautiful her skin looked under the bright, warm daylight, and looked forward to seeing her face, her long arms and bare bosom illuminated by the same light he'd seen shine on her high cheekbones and square jaw.

_Bren, it's been nearly two hundred mornings since last I saw your face, _he thought. _A couple of more such mornings and, God willing, your sweet, lovely face shall be the first thing I see when I open my eyes each morning until the dawn of the day I draw my last breath on this earth. _

Soon, in a matter of a few days, he would be back in London, he'd find her, and he would finally make good on his promise to her: _I will come back. I will return._

The mare snuffled again and Booth nodded at her, giving her a nudge in the side and gently tugging the reins to the left as he made his way back down the bluff and headed towards the port in Calais. He blinked and felt the searing cold of the wind blowing against the tears that dribbled down his wind-burned cheek.

_Soon, Bren, _he thought as he glanced one last time at the chalk cliffs shimmering in the distance. _Soon you'll see that I am a man of my word. _

_Soon, you'll see. Soon._

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**A/N2: **_Yes, yes, we know. Finally! At long last, after over six months, former Dominican friar and Catholic priest Seeley Booth returns to the wacky world of Bones fanfic in our cleverly-entitled story "The Return." "The Return" picks up where its predecessor, "The Inquisitor," left off._

_Incidentally, the chapter we posted as the Epilogue to "The Inquisitor" was, in fact, written as the opening Prologue of "The Return." The mean and evil half of Dharmasera (we're not saying which is which, but one is good and one is evil) wanted to leave "The Inquisitor" where it ended with Brennan receiving Booth's letter. However, because the nice and good half of Dhamasera is merciful, said good half convinced said evil half that the audience deserved a taste of what was to come. So, an epilogue was posted even though it was originally written as the start of "The Return." Thus, if the foregoing looked familiar, it should because it is. Because it's been nigh half a year for most of you since you last read about Father Seeley and Mistress Brennan, and so that we, the authors, could remind ourselves of the world our beloved heroes inhabit and the kind of people Booth and Brennan are in that world, we thought it made sense to revisit our characters where we last left them. Hence we are posting this prologue as it was meant to be posted even if it is a bit of a cheat to some of our devoted readers._

_But, the good news is that for those of you who wish to read on and are interested in finding out what happens to the young Anglican midwife and her Catholic lover upon their reunion, we have a bunch of chapters pretty much written and in the can (i.e., new stuff, not retreads, we promise). So, be patient. Stick with us. And, we promise we'll get to the really good stuff soon._

_By way of preview, in the very near future (we promise) we'll find out what kind of world Father Booth finds upon his return from Rome, and what kind of life he will be able to make for himself once he's home in England. Did Brennan wait for him? Or, heartbroken by his sudden departure, did she lose faith and move on? And what about England itself? The late 1550s were a tumultuous time in English history as the religious wars that rocked the 16th century during the Protestant Reformation began to build towards a bloody and violent crescendo. Will Booth even recognize his homeland when he finally sets foot on her shores again? And where do his true loyalties lie, and how might that affect both his life and others for whom he cares? You know things have changed during his absence because it wouldn't be any fun if they hadn't. One final historical fun fact we'll leave you with: Queen Mary I died on November 17, 1558 and was succeeded by her younger half-sister Elizabeth Tudor. For those who lost track, our story picks up in the winter of 1559*. _

_Our last bit of advice to everyone as you await Chapter 1 is to get ready for a hell of a ride. It'll be worth it (we think). _

_*PS - Did any among you pick up on the fact that 1558, the year "The Inquisitor" took place, is exactly **447** years before 2005, the year of Bones' inaugural season? We just thought we'd point that out. We didn't plan it that way, but it's a hell of a coinkydink, huh? Or else the universe's way of saying this fanfic is divinely inspired. (We're probably gonna stick with coinkydink...*smirk*)_


	2. Chapter 1: A Primae Noctis of Sorts

**The Return**

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**By:** dharmamonkey & Lesera128  
**Rated: **M

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**Disclaimer: **So, we're still here, and by now, we know as well as you do that we don't own anything. However, we are looking into ways to take control of this sandbox via adverse possession. ::blinks:: Okay, not really. But, you get the gist.

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**A/N: **_We were quite pleased to know that, even though the Prologue was a bit of a redux, people still seem to be somewhat interested in the tale of the former Father Seeley and Mistress Brennan. *pause* Scratch that. We were downright flabbergasted by the response. We can't tell everyone how excited we are to be continuing the story. We hope you enjoy it as much as we've enjoyed writing it. So, without further ado, let's check in on the ex-priest, Seeley Booth._

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**Chapter 1: A Primae Noctis of Sorts**

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Seeley Booth, the one time Inquisitor and former Dominican priest, fluffed his goose down pillow and laid back against the hard, overstuffed straw mattress in the lodging-house room he'd secured above the busiest tavern in Marylebone. The noisy establishment had hardly been his first choice. Hoping to keep a bit of a low profile, he'd tried to secure a room in a quieter, less well-known boarding house or inn, but after being turned away from four such establishments, each of which had had every bed spoken for, he decided he needed a strong cup of ale to take the edge off his frustration, and after tilting back a couple of rounds, learned from the tavernkeeper behind the bar that a room upstairs had just become available.

He could see the yellowish light from the tavern below peeking through the cracks between the scuffed wooden floorboards that had clearly seen better days probably before he was even born. He tried his best to ignore the dull buzz of the comings and goings below him that was punctuated with loud swells of rowdy laughter over the rolling murmur of various voices. A thin pale white beeswax taper burned low on the small, rickety table in the corner of the room where lay the room's only amenities: a pitcher, a large bowl to serve as a wash basin, and a nearly-threadbare linen hand towel.

That said, Booth didn't begrudge the spartan nature of his present accommodations, which in fact were more or less equivalent to many of the guest rooms or friary cells he'd taken shelter in along the thousand-mile road from St. Peter's to the quayside at Calais. Indeed, he reminded himself with a wry grin, there were many nights along the way when he had to make do with a thin bedroll, a scratchy wool blanket and his saddle for a pillow. After a month spent riding eight or ten hours a day, he was relieved to be finally back in the land of his birth, in a real city, sleeping in a real bed, knowing that just a few minutes' walk away was the woman he'd journeyed so long to find.

_Bren..._

His heart began to race at the thought of her. He closed his eyes as he remembered the last night they were together and the way she'd felt beneath him, her thighs pressing against his hips as he rose up into her, again and again, his ears filling with the sound of her peaking moans and his eyes transfixed by the sight of her, the porcelain skin of her breasts illuminated by the shaft of moonlight that shone through the tiny window high on the wall of her cell as she arched her back in the moments just prior to her release. He remembered the way her cheeks flushed and the lazy, satisfied smile that broke across her lovely, square-jawed face and how he'd called out her name in a breathy groan when he finally let go and emptied himself into her. He smiled and thought of her eyes, so cool and blue and yet by no means dispassionate, aflame as they were with an intelligence that set his own soul afire with every knowing look she directed his way. His belly flipped as her name echoed in his mind.

_Mistress Temperance Brennan..._

He'd mumbled her name under his breath a thousand times, the syllables warming his lips like the refrain of a prayer as he let his memory of her face and her voice be the last thought that ran through his mind as he surrendered himself to sleep. Booth's body burned for her, but more so even than that, his heart ached for her as he yearned to hear the sound of her rich, husky, confident voice and feel her warm breath on the side of his neck. He couldn't count how many nights he snuggled his head into his pillow with a heavy sigh and fought back tears as he wondered where she was and whether she had believed him when he'd written her that he would return to her.

Booth remembered the way his body had hungered for her and the way his heart had ached for her during the week he was in the infirmary after the friar in charge of the Dominican house, Brother Gordon Wyatt, had stumbled upon him, flush-faced, sweaty and still panting from his life-changing joining with Brennan in the interrogation room. He'd wanted nothing more than to go to her again, and failing that to get a message to her somehow, but he found himself imprisoned in the infirmary under the care of old monk Paul, who had bled him so many times that the bleeding itself sapped his strength such that he spent three solid days sleeping and the next three so exhausted that he could barely drink a cup of mead or gnaw on a bit of crusty bread and cheese. While he agonized over thoughts of the impact his forced silence and isolation must have had on her in the wake of the incredible, heady intimacy they'd shared, it was thoughts of her that was a sort of salvation as his body fought in those days to regain its earlier strength.

Glancing down at the floorboards with a smirk as another surge of intoxicated laughter warbled its way into his room from below, Booth leaned back against his pillow and closed his eyes again, remembering the one memory from that week that stuck with him more than any other. It seemed odd to him that the most enduring memory was not of the bleeding itself—thank God, he thought, because the poking and the piercing and the wooziness he'd feel afterwards was something he'd rather have forgotten altogether—but rather of a dream he'd had during one of his fitful, bleeding-induced sleeps.

_It was springtime. The leaves of the wide-canopied sessile oaks and little-leafed linden trees fluttered against a warm orange sky as a gentle breeze whispered from behind the setting sun._ _ As he surveyed the horizon, something about the rolling, grassy fields and lush wooded felt familiar, almost homelike in a way even that Booth couldn't quite put his finger on since he hadn't really had a __place__ to call home since his childhood in Kent. The calming sense of familiarity was cut short as soon as his eyes roamed lower and glanced at his booted feet. Gone were the well-worn sandals and flowy white robe and black hooded cloak of his Dominican habit, curiously replaced by a layman's garb—a linen shirt, doublet, leggings and a hunter's green cloak. Blinking a few times at the odd sight, he shook away his confusion and looked around him. _

_Standing in a copse of ancient oaks on the edge of a clearing, he saw a little boy in a ramshackle swing made from a plank of oak and two lengths of old hemp rope. The little boy's face lit up in delight as the twisted rope swing with its curved wooden seat shot him aloft in a long, lazy arc, then pulled him back to earth with a gut-tugging swiftness that made the boy laugh. _

_The boy, perhaps five or six years old, had pink, apple-shaped cheeks, wavy light brown hair and a bright, toothy grin that was so infectious that Booth himself couldn't resist smiling back. The smiling boy seemed to beckon Booth for his attention, but for some reason, he held back and lingered at the edge of the clearing, apparently content to stand and watch from a distance. After another minute of swinging, the boy turned to Booth and called out to him, but Booth couldn't make out his words, which reached his ears as a distant, liquid murmur. Undeterred, the boy leaned back in the swing, bracing himself with a firm, tight-fisted grip on the ropes as he kicked his legs out and back again as he tried to build more momentum to send himself higher and higher in the air. The boy giggled as his kicking sent him soaring, high enough that the whooshing of the swing's motion made the leaves of the broad-mantled oak's low-hanging branches twitter in its wake. _

_The small boy turned his head and looked over his shoulder, causing Booth to move in the same direction. When the swing was in a particularly high angle, a smile lit the boy's face as he suddenly hopped off of it while it was still moving and started running towards Booth. As he came closer, Booth noticed the boy's eyes, which were deep-set and almond-shaped, like his own. However, they differed in one key manner: they were a striking blue-green hue, so pale one might almost mistake them for being gray. As he looked at the boy, focused on his eyes, he knew something was important about those eyes. _

_There was __something__ about the eyes that struck him as familiar, but he couldn't initially place it. He frowned for a minute, looking at the little boy's eyes as he watched the child's sturdy legs carry him closer and closer to where Booth stood. He was just about to open his mouth to say something when he suddenly felt a hand on his. Startled, he felt his heart jump into his throat as blood roared into his ears, taken by surprise as he'd been. He quickly turned his head to see who had, quite unusually, managed to sneak up on him, and he'd felt another strange emotion crash into him when he saw Mistress Temperance Brennan beside him._

_Brennan_—_dressed in a casual linen dress of the palest blue and in her bare feet_—_allowed her slender fingers to close around his thicker ones as her bright pink lips parted to reveal a bright smile. Her hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail, but somehow Booth couldn't help but admire how pretty she looked despite the casualness of her garb. _

_Shaking her head, clearly amused by whatever look she saw on his face, she said in a throaty drawl that made Booth's heart rate speed faster, "What?"_

"_Bren?" he whispered as his eyes met hers while the pale-eyed, wavy-locked boy continued to run towards him, his now-audible giggles filling the silence that hung between them. _

_Booth's eyes skimmed along the line of her square jaw, down her neck, over her bosom, finally coming to rest at her waist where her free hand lay lightly on the curve of her hip, emphasizing the noticeably rounded swell of her belly. She pulled his hand to her belly, and he felt his heart quicken as an unseen force nudged his fingers from below. __His eyes snapped up to meet hers again for a fleeting instant before the boy's voice called out behind him._

"_Father, Father!" the boy called out in giddy excitement as he continued troting toward the pair. "Here I am, Father. I'm coming! Look at me."_

Booth remembered how strange it had felt to wake up in the infirmary, bleary-eyed and exhausted, yet oddly bolstered by the scene that had played through his sleeping mind. Although he'd not recognized the place he'd been in the dream, it hadn't felt foreign to him, and while the clothes he'd found himself wearing in the dream were not his own, he hadn't felt uncomfortable, distressed, or unnerved by them. The strangest part of the dream's strange circumstances—the mysterious boy on the swing who'd coming running towards him with obvious familiarity shining in his eyes, though he was quite certain that _he _didn't know the child—was that, oddly, the images hadn't frightened him in any way whatsoever. If anything, something about that place had given him a sense of comfort, odd as that had seemed to him at the time. Because as puzzling as the dream-place was, the one thing that had made it real and familiar in a way that felt almost tangibly cozy was the most captivating image of all: the cool pair of blue eyes that glittered back at him as she looked up to meet his gaze while she said his name in the last fleeting seconds before he'd blinked awake again.

As he lay in the tavern-house bed and stared at the whitewashed wattle and daub ceiling overhead, Booth couldn't rid his mind of the images in that dream, which vision he'd had two other times during the week he spent in the Dominican infirmary, albeit with minor variations in the details—the length of the boy's hair, the color of Brennan's dress, the strength of the breeze. The scene tugged at something deep in his belly, bringing a smile to his lips for a few seconds before his brow furrowed a bit in consternation.

He wanted nothing more than to be with her again, to see her face and hear her voice, to hold her hands, to smell the sweet scent of rosemary and mint in her silky dark hair and to kiss her mouth until his eyesight was dotted with pricks of purple and his lungs burned for air. The bittersweet memory of having been with her, and the hopeful thought of being with her once again, had been the only things to sustain him through the long months of arduous travel and the longer months of frustrating idleness while he waited in Rome to be released from his vows and released back into the world. But now that he had his freedom and was mere hours away from having again everything he'd wanted for so long, he felt a creeping fear in the pit of his stomach.

_Did she believe me? _he asked himself. _Did she wait for me? _A hard knot formed in his throat as a twinge of doubt flickered in the back of his mind. _Maybe I should have taken the chance, accepted the risk and found a way to get a message to her, even though... _

He closed his eyes and shook his head as a quiet grunt sounded from deep in his chest. _But I couldn't, _he told himself with resolve._ I couldn't do that. I couldn't take that risk...not with her. It wasn't safe. With Elizabeth just then taking the throne, sending her a message of any kind from Rome could have put her very life in danger. _Booth swallowed, then rolled over and looked out into the night as a gust of cold wind rattled against the window, wondering if she was tucked snugly in her bed and whether she was warm and comfortable and safe and maybe even if she was thinking of him.

_Oh, Bren, _he murmured to himself as he felt his chest tighten at the thought of her arms covered with goosepimples in the cold of night. _God, I miss you so much. I've missed you every day, all day long. Did you miss me? Did you even think of me? Did you, Bren?_

Knowing that he wouldn't have to wait much longer to find out the answers to those questions―whatever they were, for better or worse―Booth knew it was time to sleep. Pulling the musty wool blanket over his shoulders as he nuzzled his face into his pillow, he closed his eyes and imagined that the pillow was the back of her neck and that the warm skin his fingers touched as he curled into sleep wasn't his own, but was hers. Drawing in a slow breath, he tried to imagine that his nostrils were filling with the sweet smell of her satisfied sweat as his mind relaxed into the idea of her and slowly let go of the concerns of the waking world.

* * *

Booth stood watching her from across the street for a long time.

It hadn't been difficult to find her father's shop. After all, it wasn't like there were a tremendous amount of well-known apothecary shops in the immediate vicinity of Marylebone in London. After having bought a meat pastie and cone of roasted hazelnuts from a street vendor, Booth had walked to a small spot on the opposite side of the street from which he could eat them in silence as he took in the sights and smells of what he'd come to think of as home in the time he'd been away from her―home being defined only by one point of consideration. For him, home was wherever _she _was.

Booth could see her quite clearly through the large windows of her father's well-appointed shop. After so many months apart, he hungered for the sight of her. Now that he was free to look his fill, he feasted on the vision of her as she served a series of customers behind the shop's main counter. He smiled as he saw that, at least to him, her hair looked much shinier, her eyes looked much brighter, her skin looked much softer, and her smile looked that much more true and genuine than when he'd seen her last.

_She looks happy_, he thought, pleased at what that might mean for what she had experienced in his absence. _Much happier than the last time I saw her. But, I suppose if it were me, I, too, would feel happier to be free and finally at home, surrounded by my family._

He stopped as he considered the words again: free...home...family.

_God, I've missed her_, he thought for what had to have been at least the ten thousandth time since he'd been forced to leave her the previous June. _So much. So very, __very__ much._

Knowing that he wouldn't be able to control himself for much longer―as he'd somewhat uncharacteristically developed a stubborn streak of impatience where all things about Mistress Temperance Brennan were concerned―Booth knew he needed to finish his snack. Wolfing down what was left, it was only a few moments later that he'd polished off the remnants of the food he'd purchased. As soon as he'd finished the meat pastie, and downed the warm hazelnuts, he licked the last few grains of salt from his chapped lips, tossed the empty wrapper on the ground and then decided that he'd spent enough time looking. He glanced both ways down the street before he crossed it, his heart rate increasing with every step he took that brought him closer to the shop's entrance and closer to _her_.

However, as he neared the shop's door, he saw through the windows that Brennan wasn't alone, even though she'd just shooed the last of her most recent wave of customers away. A young man, tall and wiry, with a mop of sandy brown hair and warm brown eyes, entered from what was obviously a back room. As he entered the room, Brennan turned and smiled. She gestured to him with her lips curled into a teasing smile that Booth instantly recognized. He stood frozen in awe watching as she moved out from around the counter.

No sooner had a smile warmed his cold-chapped lips when Booth's entire world crashed down around him as he saw what the counter had obscured.

Brennan's body, still graceful even as she moved, was very different from how he remembered it being a mere six months earlier. It was clear that her movements were a bit more awkward, a bit slower than they had been before. And, and the reason for both was obvious as soon as he saw her body unobscured.

_Oh, God_, he thought, as he felt the blood drain from his face. _Oh, God_―_no. No, it can't be. God, no._

Seeing her swollen with child, suddenly the shiny hair, bright eyes, soft skin, and happy smile made sense. Booth felt his heart drop into his stomach as he wondered exactly how much things had changed in his absence.

The young man standing next to Brennan as she pointed at something she was obviously too large to reach given her pregnancy gave her a strange look. She gave him an exasperated sigh before she playfully swatted his arm.

_How? Why? Really? _Were the first coherent thoughts that echoed in Booth's mind when he'd recovered enough from the shock he'd felt upon seeing her after all this time. What he'd hoped to be one of the happiest moments in his life now suddenly seemed to be one of the worst, if not _the _worst of them. _She's moved on_, some sliver of remaining rationality chided him gently. His mouth twisted into a painful grimace as the meat pastie and hazelnuts he'd just eat seemed close to coming back up the back of his throat. Booth literally thought he could taste ash in his mouth as sadly he thought. _God and all His holy saints help me, she's moved on_―

He stared at her for another couple of minutes, unable to tear his tortured gaze away from the scene of domestic happiness that was playing out before him. But, after a while, when he realized he'd been standing so long in the same place that his feet were numb, Booth knew he needed to make a decision about what to do.

_I always just wanted her to be happy_, one voice in his head said. _And from what I can see it looks like she is. She's safe, and she has what she always deserved, even if I couldn't be the one to give it to her. She's happy._

Booth wanted to scream at the realization, but knew it was undeniably true. Even still, he couldn't help himself as another voice tried to soothe his mental anguish.

_It's not her fault, _that second voice said. _It's not your fault, either. It just...everything between you, you've known from the very start, it was never meant to be. It's just a sad, sad, tragic thing even though it wasn't what you'd hoped for, but it's not like she's dead...or even hurting or in pain or in any danger of any kind. She just moved on with her life, just like you yourself are going to have to do._

Booth felt another stab of pain in his gut at the thought of what he'd somehow lost without even realizing it as the thing he held most precious in his heart had slipped through his fingers.

_It's horrible, yes, _the soft voice continued. _But maybe that's just what was meant to be. Maybe that was just what God's will was as far as what He had planned for her. Besides, divine will aside, it's not like she can personally be blamed. She had no way of knowing what was happening...what you might have been able to give her, so there's no fault in what's happened, what's been done. It just __is__._

Booth felt a flash of stubbornness at the stoic proclamation―one he desperately wanted to find some way to fight against. Pursing his lips, he shook his head as he stared at the dusty ground in front of him, wondering what way he might be able to change things so he didn't hurt as much as he did in that moment or as badly as he believed he would feel in the coming days, months, and years since he'd lost the love of his life.

"Bren," he whispered in a choked voice. "Why...how...how could you do this to me?"

Almost immediately, in response to Booth's strangled whisper, the same soft voice chided him, _Come, now, Booth. Don't be like that. It wasn't as if any commitments were made between you two. You weren't free to give her any more than you did, so you can't really blame her for looking to find someone who could once you'd left since you only told her in your letter that you would return, but not when exactly that would be or what might be able to happen once you did._

That voice of rationality, however, quickly disappeared when he glanced back across the street and took in the pretty domestic picture of Brennan, swollen with child, and clearly happy with her new husband as he looked from the outside in as witness to her new life.

_She didn't wait, _a more vile and incendiary voice in his head hissed. _She didn't trust you. She didn't take you at your word. She left you before you could really leave her. _Booth gritted his teeth as he saw the happy grin Brennan flashed the other man. _That could've been yours_. _That __should've__ been yours._

Letting out a deep breath, Booth was at a loss for how to proceed. On one hand, he felt a mixture of sadness, anger, disappointment, and regret. On the other, he felt a protective need to make certain Brennan was okay and that she knew he wasn't a liar. As he struggled with maintaining control of his emotions, finally, he realized he had a difficult decision to make. He knew he had to make a decision, for better or worse, between two choices: walk away without her being any wiser to the fact that he'd been there or go inside and let her know of his return, whatever the consequences.

As he watched the pair through the window, appearing to be bickering about something stemming from whatever it was that Brennan had wanted off of the shelf that she couldn't reach, Booth thought about his choices.

_You told her you'd come back_, he thought as he struggled with what choice to make. _If nothing else, for that reason alone, she needs to know that you kept your word. You need to be a man and do what you came here to do. Let go of the anger, as there's no blame to assign here. Go in, say hello, spend a few moments exchanging pleasantries. That way, she knows you aren't a liar and that you kept your promise. You can also make certain that she's alright...happy and safe, like it seems. And, then, once all that is done...then, for your own sake if nothing else, you can get some closure when you say a proper farewell to her and be on your way._

Turning the idea around in his head, for several moments, Booth eventually could find no fault with it logic since it would fulfill his promise to her, allow him to see and hear her one last time, and let him reassure himself that she was indeed—as she appeared to be—safe and happy, and thus give himself some closure for what he believed would be the most tumultuous period in his entire life.

Nodding, a renewed sense of steeled resolve propelling him forward, it seemed as if one minute he was standing on the outside looking in and then in the next he was inside the shop, standing in front of her and very much in the thick of things.

When the door to the shop opened, the tell-tale bell tinkled prettily. Standing on the far side of the counter, looking at a jar of dried mint that she'd only gotten when she threatened to complain to her father about the lack of quality help they had in the shop―which had caused said help to disappear quite quickly once he'd grumbled one last time and gotten Brennan her jar―and so her back was to the shop's front door. However, she knew the process well enough to know what to do and say without turning around until she'd assessed how much of the dried herb she had in stock.

"Just one moment," she called out without looking up even as she sensed the presence of another person having entered the shop. "I'll be right with you," her familiar voice drifted to him from over her shoulder.

Brennan held the glass jar in her hand up to the light, taking in the amount of the dark green dried herb. Her lips pursed together as she realized that she'd been right after all and that they were going to need to set out more leaves to dry in the root cellar as she told her father just that morning at breakfast. Smiling to herself, she screwed the lid back on the glass jar and set it down on the counter before she turned around with a smile on her face―a smile that quickly disappeared as she turned around and took in the sight that had appeared before her.

"How can I help―" her words cut off in mid-sentence.

Her eyes widened as she took in the sight of him, blood draining from her face as she stared at him in open mouthed shock. She swallowed once heavily, struggling to find her voice that suddenly seemed blocked by a heavy lump that had taken up residence in her throat. Her heart sped up as she heard a roaring in her ears and could, for a moment, do nothing but stare at him.

At her first glance, Brennan thought he looked both completely the same and utterly different at the same time. His hair was about the same in style and length as she remembered, as were his manner and bearing. But, he looked completely strange in the garments he wore. He stood before her in a cream-colored laced tunic over which he wore a doublet of a deep wine color. A pair of black pants covered his legs while his black leather boots looked dusty from travel.

After a minute, she forced herself to blink to make certain she wasn't seeing things since she couldn't imagine how such a surreal experience could come to pass in reality. The pair stared at one another for a long minute before she finally found her voice once more.

"Booth?" she managed to ask at last, her voice catching slightly in her throat, giving away the clearly emotional response she was having at his appearance.

He nodded slowly, his face grave as he watched her face shift from the expression of hooded (albeit pleasant and sympathetic) distance that she seemed to use when dealing with the shop's clientele to one of recognition and surprise at seeing him standing before her. He couldn't help but feel a dark, gut-twisting flash at the way her face seemed to flush at the sight of him, and he wondered if there was a thread of something else—shame, perhaps—in her sheepish expression. His brow furrowed as he silently chastised himself for such a response, then swallowed hard and let a sweet, faint smile curve the corner of his lip as he greeted her.

"Hello, Bren."

"Booth?" She croaked as she tilted her head, her throat still tight so that it was no more than a whisper when she spoke, despite having regained the ability to speak only a moment earlier. "How? I-I...is it...really you?"

Booth nodded once more, solemnly at first but after hearing the edge of hesitation in her voice, he felt a wave of protectiveness and he smiled faintly, hoping to see her lips curve up and offer a hint of the clever smirk that had taken his breath away the first time he saw it six-odd months earlier.

And, with that nod and slight smile, it was as if he'd released her from some magic spell. She turned on her feet sharply, hurtling herself towards him as she flung herself into his arms.

Booth was taken aback slightly by her greeting, but once he felt her in his arms again, he couldn't help himself as he tightened his arms around her, and she melted into his embrace. The pair were silent for a moment before Brennan drew a breath and began to speak, slowly recovering her wits and her normal countenance.

"Well," she told him with a teasing edge coming into her voice. "I can't say I wasn't expecting to see you again, but I was trying not to hold out too much hope that you'd be the one that would come to me again when our next meeting finally occurred."

"You've been expecting me?" Booth asked, clearly surprised at the same time he mentally berated himself for ever doubting her, even as he relished and reveled in the feel of her warmth against his body. "Really?"

She nodded her head slightly as she whispered, "I believe that you were the one who told me we weren't done at the conclusion of our last discussion. I had no reason not to take you at your word in that matter."

The echo of her words brought him back seven months earlier, and he smiled as he recalled the same conversation they'd had on the night that had started to change things between them.

"I don't lie," he said, giving her the necessary response with a bit of playfulness coming into his voice. "I never have, and I never will―not to you. I swear it."

This time it was Brennan who broke their script when she pulled back and reached up a hand to cup his stubbled jaw. "I know you don't." She let her thumb caress his cheek as she said, "You've been gone a very long time, though."

"Yes," he agreed, his voice quiet, even as he stared into her light blue eyes that whirled in a conflicting confusion of emotions and responses of which he couldn't even begin to make sense. "I have."

"But, you're here now," Brennan said, smiling even as her eyes watered a bit. She let her fingers skim over the faint bearded edge of his jaw before bringing her hand to her own face, rubbing her eyes with a quick swipe of the back of her hand against first the left eye and then her right. She took a breath, letting her hand fall to her side as she pulled back from him slightly. She then gestured at his clothing as she said, "And with things to tell me, I think?"

He nodded slowly.

"Good," she responded with a happy nod. "That's good. Because we need to talk. There are so many things that I need to tell you―a great many things." She saw Booth tense as soon as the words were out of her mouth. Quirking an eyebrow at him as she noticed his response, she stopped and then asked, she asked, "What is it?"

Booth swallowed heavily as he stepped away from her and said, "I suppose I'm the last to congratulate you, Bren."

"Congratulate me?" Brennan asked, a slightly bewildered look crossing her face. "Congratulate me for what?"

Booth swallowed again and took a deep breath. "On your marriage," he said quietly even though he felt he was driving a stake into his very heart with each syllable he spoke. He winced at the painful lump that that suddenly hardened in the back of his throat as he croaked, "So...congratulations."

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**A/N: **_Oh no! What happened? Did Bren really move on? She's pregnant...and married? But what about poor Booth? Is this __really__ the end for them? What do you think of that little bombshell? Are you surprised? We bet at least some of you are, at least as much as poor Booth was, but that's the way it goes sometimes, right? The world can change in an instant, huh? Never fear, however, as is often the case with the work of Dharmasera, there's more going on here then meets the eye, we promise._

_That being said, once again, Dharmasera have ventured way out on the edge to bring you a story unlike any other that's ever been attempted in Bones fanfic space. It's a little lonely out here on the edge. So, especially with a story like this, we need your feedback. And, hey, you lurkers, we know you're out there. Step into the light and tell us what you think. Don't leave us hanging out here on the lonely edge of creative risk-taking. Share with us your response with us. So, everyone, please let us know what you think of "The Return" so far, which you can do by graciously leaving us a review. _

_*pause* _

_Pretty please? It would mean a lot. Taking the notion of expanding boundaries and living on the edge a bit literally, the globetrotting _**dharmamonkey**_ posted this chapter while traveling thousands of miles from home in the ancient city that Constantine the Great dubbed "Nova Roma" when he founded it in 330 A.D. (which city we know from "Inquisitor" was one which Father Seeley had once visited). *monkey waves from Istanbul* Surely such devotion to the craft merits some kind of consideration, don't you think? Reviews make great gifts. _

_*Boothy puppy dog eyes*_

_If that doesn't get you, we figure nothing will, but either way, thanks for reading._

_And, for those who are wondering, we're not quite sure what our posting schedule will be for this story. We'd like to say we'll have a new chapter about once every ten days. That is subject, of course, to real life demands of both authors and the fact that we're trying to wrap our other opus (the Bones/Angel crossover story that is posting under _**Lesera128'**s _account). If you haven't checked it out, but like edgy creative AUs, then what are you waiting for...shoo! Go read...now! Right now_. _Anyway (plug for other Dharmasera work complete: __check__) we will try to stick to that rough schedule, but no promises. So, until next time, enjoy._


	3. Chapter 2: Illusory Visions Realized

**The Return**

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**By:** dharmamonkey & Lesera128  
**Rated: **M

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**Disclaimer: **So, we're still here, and by now, we know as well as you do that we don't own anything. However, we are looking into ways to take control of this sandbox via adverse possession. ::blinks:: Okay, not really. But, you get the gist.

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**Chapter 2: Illusory Visions Realized**

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**A/N: **_What can we say? The response we've received on the first two installments of "The Return" has exceeded our wildest expectations. To those of you who've taken the time to leave a review or to reach out to dharmamonkey on Twitter, thank you! If after reading this chapter, you're smiling or frowning or pulling your hair out wondering when the next chapter is going to post, and you would like to help to encourage us, the writers, as we post this uniquely crazy little story of ours, by all means, please consider dropping us a note. We've said it before, and we're sure we'll say it again, but we're certain that many of our readers have no idea how much it means to hear from our readers._

_Our apologies for the delay in getting this chapter up for you. It did take longer than the hoped-for ten days. Part of the delay was due to one of the authors returning from Istanbul, Turkey with a case of the flu. The rest of the delay? Well, we did say in the last chapter that our hoped for posting schedule of getting a new chapter up once every ten days was just an approximation, not a promise. But, better late than never, huh?_

_So, without further ado, let's get back to where we left our heroes, standing in front of the counter in Matthew Brennan's apothecary shop in the London parish of Marylebone._

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Mistress Temperance Brennan's day had started much as the ones before it had begun.

She'd awakened shortly before dawn with a smile on her face, glad to know that she wouldn't be jerked awake by the noisy calls of an irksome thrush that had taken to sitting in her window casement and singing each morning for the past couple of months. Brennan considered it a small victory whenever she managed to wake up before the bird's incessant chirps and high-pitched trill acted like her own personalized wake up call.

Since she'd entered her second trimester, for the most part, she'd felt much, much better than she had during the first weeks of her pregnancy. She still tired somewhat easily, but her nausea had all but disappeared and her appetite had returned. Although she'd yet to experience what she'd call any strange cravings, she could once more eat things that had been among her most favorite foods, but during the first segment of her pregnancy, the mere scent of them had set her off on almost violent attacks of retching.

After getting up and dressing, she had stealthily crept down to the kitchen to begin making the morning's breakfast. By the time the rest of her family had stumbled into the kitchen, blurry-eyed and still not awake as they plunked themselves into the rough hewn chairs that had occupied the same places since before Brennan had been born, were welcomed by the smells of fresh bread baking, honeyed porridge bubbling in the well-loved iron kettle that hung over the fire, and salt-cured ham being cut into pieces for their trenchers. She had hummed quietly as she'd prepared their morning repasts, piling the wooden trenchers high with a hearty selection of soft white cheeses, sliced hard-boiled eggs, and seasonal fresh fruit like apples and pears. She'd also set three tankards of crisp hard cider that everyone would use to wash down their food with onto the wooden table.

After breakfast, Brennan had followed the others across the small courtyard that separated their house from the building that served as her father's well-known apothecary shop in Marylebone. The morning business had been brisk, as it often was during the winter months, when coughs and colds seemed to spike while the aches and pains of arthritic joints were apt to trouble their owners more than in the summer, Brennan really hadn't had a moment to stop and take a deep breath in between wave after wave of customers before one former inquisitor had finally kept his promise to her and returned to find her.

Now that he had, Brennan knew her day would be, if nothing else, ending quite differently than any of her previous days had since the moment she'd waited for months to occur had finally come to pass. Still, as she stared at Booth and tried to make sense of why he might be congratulating her, she couldn't come up with a logical reason to explain what might've prompted his words.

At last, still at a loss for what was causing the soulfully crestfallen look on Booth's face, Brennan's brow furrowed and she said, "Well, I have to admit, Booth, no congratulations are needed, unless you'd like to congratulate me on my widowhood as well." She paused as she considered what she'd just said and then chuckled at her own joke. When she looked up and saw that the confusion that she'd felt just a moment earlier seemed to have jumped over and attached itself to Booth, she couldn't help needle him just a bit as she added, "Although, between you and I, even if that's what your aim is, then I have to admit that I think it's still a bit ridiculous since your timing is so off."

Booth's nose crinkled, and his brown eyes narrowed to mere slits as he shook his head and shot her a quizzical look.

"My timing?" he finally asked as he tilted his head and blinked, hoping some type of clarity would emerge to dispel the overwhelmingly frustrating sense of confusion he felt as he struggled to understand what Brennan was saying. "What do you mean my timing's off?"

Recognizing the small edge of sharpness that she heard in his voice, which she knew had found its way there from years spent in positions of authority (whether arguing cases in the curia in Rome or conducting affairs as an inquisitor for the Holy Mother Church), she couldn't help but smile as she finally took pity on him.

"Yes, Booth," she clarified. "I would say that you're about ten years too late in your very generous if somewhat misplaced offer of your felicitations on my marriage."

Booth reached up and scratched the back of his head, his heart fluttering as a hint of hope flickered in the gray haze of his confusion. He felt a nervous, vaguely buoyant swirl in his gut as he glanced from her pale eyes down to her child-swollen belly and up again. _What are you trying to tell me, Bren? _a voice whispered in his head. _I don't understand. Maybe because I can't...maybe because I don't want to...but in either case, please. Help me._

"What?" he finally coughed as he looked her straight in the eyes. "I don't understand."

"Booth," she said with a playful look tugging at the corners of her mouth. "What don't you understand? I'm not married," Brennan said with a small shake of her head. "And, I haven't been for well over a decade."

"But," Booth countered as he cocked his head and raked his fingers through his hair, then rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand as he struggled to make sense of what she was saying in relation to what he'd thought he knew just moments before.

Just a little bit earlier, he'd been standing in the street and had seen every hope he'd held close to his heart—of returning to her at long last and sweeping her into his arms in a loving embrace—suddenly evaporate as he'd watched her exchange playful slaps with a good-looking young man who'd touched her with an intimacy that Booth had until then considered his province alone. He looked back at her with his eyebrows raised, his forehead deeply creased and his nostrils flared wide, as he felt awash in a sense of helplessness he'd never felt before.

_I know what I know..._ Booth thought. _I saw it with my own eyes. I know what I saw...it, well, that's what it has to be, isn't it? Even if you didn't wait for me, you'd never just take up with another man unless you married him, would you, Bren? You're not that fickle...nor that careless. Strong-willed and strong-minded, but never careless nor that stupid. So...what? What else could it be? What else can that evidence mean if not for the fact that you've taken a husband since last I held you in my arms even though I never stopped loving you? Who else would you leave me for if not a husband since, you thought, only a husband could offer you the one thing I couldn't? Please tell me..._

"I saw you," he said, his voice wavering as he spoke. "Umm...through the window...with that man...who's obviously...well..."

Booth fell silent as he drew in a deep breath, shifting his weight from one hip to the other as he shook his head, glancing towards the doorway of a small room behind the counter before bringing his eyes back to meet hers. He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple dipping low in his throat and the corner of his lip curling as he wasn't sure whether to give in to hope and smile or to hold back lest the other shoe drop when he heard her reveal that, no, she wasn't married but that she had nonetheless fallen in love with another man whose child now grew in her belly. He stared for another couple of moments at her swollen midsection then looked up at her again with sharply arched brow.

"I mean, uhh, Bren," he half-stuttered with a choked cough as he reddened a bit in embarrassment at speaking of such private things so openly and so directly. "Well, it's obvious that you're―" He stopped as he gestured at her belly. "I mean...you are, aren't you?"

As soon as he'd spoken, she suddenly realized what Booth must've thought, and she quickly understood his confusion and the unusual nervousness and tentativeness that had cloaked his normally confident bearing from the moment he'd walked into the shop. As that look of comprehension again dawned on Brennan's face, her mouth opened in a delicate o-shape, before she abruptly closed it. She pursed her lips, a faint, almost imperceptible smile dancing across her slender lips as she looked deep into his warm, glistening brown eyes. He raised his brows and blinked back at her with a hopeful, if somewhat hesitant look, nibbling the inside of his lip as he felt his heart begin to beat a little faster with each passing second that they held one another's gaze. After a few moments, his eyes narrowed again as if wincing in anticipation of a heavy, painful blow he knew could come. She felt his trepidation in that moment as if it were her own, and a wave of sympathy washed over her that finally prompted her to speak again.

"Ohhh," she said, giving him a slight nod as she decided to start with the first mistaken assumption he'd made. "Hmmm. Well, if the man you saw me with a few minutes ago had had the distinct honor of fathering this child, then we'd _really_ have some serious issues to discuss."

Even more confused, Booth squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head as he tried to make sense of what she was saying. His mind was reeling with a dozen different scenarios to explain how so much could have changed between them in the six months they'd been apart. Although her words made no sense to him, echoing in his mind as a baffling murmur, he couldn't shake the sense that everything he'd thought was true had changed in an instant. However, he clung to a thread of hope, hanging on to the hint of amusement in her husky voice and a soft look of openness in her pale eyes as she stood there chuckling at his befuddlement while he continued to look at her like she was uttering jibberish..

"Huh?" he responded, giving her a pleading look. "Bren, I don't understand..."

"The man you saw me bickering with earlier?" she asked as she held his quizzical gaze before he gave her an almost imperceptible nod. "That wasn't my husband, Booth. It was my older brother, Russ."

"Brother?" Booth asked, even more disoriented by her answer than he had been a minute earlier.

His gaze swiveled again to the doorway behind the counter where he heard the rustling of papers and he felt a wave of relief wash over him as he let go of a breath he hadn't until that moment realized he'd been holding. _Was I wrong? _he asked himself. _God, maybe I did come back in time before someone else snatched her up. _His eyes again fell to her belly. _But if that's true, and I'm not too late, then how...? How and why...and what happens next? _

"But, I don't―" His voice trailed off, his inability to still comprehend what she was telling him clear as his words hung unfinished in the air that was still heavy between them. "How?"

"That was my brother, Booth, not my husband," Brennan repeated. She nodded at him again, hoping her intense gaze would convey to him the significance and truth of her words even if her verbalization of them, for some reason, could not. "The only husband that I've ever had has been laying dead and buried in St. Mary-le-Bow Church for almost eleven years."

"What―wait," Booth said with a shake of his head, his cheeks flushing as a small smile of relief curved the corners of his lips. His eyes widened as the significance of her admission finally began to sink in and he began to wonder if the waking dream of the previous few minutes, which at first he had mistaken as the realization of his worst nightmare, was in fact a dream come true. "I don't understand," he stuttered, a portion of his rational mind still rebelling against the puzzling turn of events. "I mean, how can that be if you're..."

"With child?" Brennan asked with an arched eyebrow. He nodded slowly. She bit her lip for a few seconds, pushing away the annoyance that she'd felt since, of the hundred different ways she'd expected this moment to unfold, none of them even remotely resembled how it was actually proceeding.

Taking a step towards him, gently, she reached out for his hand, threaded her fingers through his, and brought them to the round swell of her stomach. Resting them there lightly, she looked up at him and said, "As I told you―there are many things we need to discuss, you and I. Do you..." She paused for a beat as she felt him extend his fingers across her belly. "Do you understand, Booth?"

Booth could only stare at her in dumbfounded shock as he processed her words and then slowly nodded his head. _Oh, my God, _he thought. _How can this be? Of course, I know how—we bedded, her and I, and she and I...we...us...we were together. And that's how it happens, isn't it? A man and a woman are together, and like Adam and Eve, they give into temptation and are fruitful and multiply. But...me? Us? I mean, yes, we certainly gave into temptation more times than I can count—but can this really be real? All of it? Is it so? Did she...did she really not only believe me and wait for me, but she did it in the face of this huge burden that she might've had to bear alone? Is it true? Is it...this child of hers...this child...it's not just her child, but that it's my child? Our child? _Booth stood there, stunned and silent, as he looked down at his hand, his long, thick fingers laced with hers, splayed over her swollen belly where her child grew. _Oh God. _The two tiny words echoing in his mind took his breath away. _Our child._ He paused for a moment as he almost felt the breath race out of his lungs, and he had to force himself to breathe or else he'd pass out. _This is unreal, _he told himself_. Surely I'm dreaming still. I'm asleep in my bed, and I'm dreaming. _His mind was inundated with a wild, chaotic swirl of a hundred roiling thoughts and peppered with feelings he didn't understand as he unthreaded his fingers from hers, taking a moment to move his hand in a small arc over her belly then pulled away, letting his fingertips brush lightly across the fabric of her dress as he stared at his shaking hand. _Oh, my God, _he sighed silently, letting go of a breath and forming his still-quivering hand into a fist as he slowly lifted his head and looked into her eyes. _Please don't let this be some evil that the Devil has used to try to tempt me away from God and His plan for me. Please let it be real and right and...oh, God...just please_.

"We should talk," Brennan repeated, reaching for his hand again as she read the nervous unease, doubt and uncertainty plainly writ in his eyes. She quickly glanced around the shop, then made a face and said, "But, not here." She stopped and then looked away as her brain went through the various possibilities. "The house," she said firmly. "That would be better. We—well, after all this time, you and I deserve some privacy. Russ can stay here and mind the shop while we go to the house so we can talk...uninterrupted." Booth barely had time to open his mouth before Brennan blurted out in a loud and booming voice, "Russ!"

"What?" snapped a muffled voice from the back room. "I told you, Tempe," the voice said quickly, not waiting for her response. "I'm trying to balance the ledgers here, and I can't keep doing that if you keep interrupting me every five minutes for some damn jar that you can't reach." The voice became louder as it was shortly accompanied by a shuffling sound that indicated some movement was forthcoming. "Make a list," the voice told her. "Alright? That way I can move all the ones you need or the ones you even think you may need all at one time so I can actually get some work done before Father gets back―"

Russ Brennan finally stepped out of the back room that was located behind the counter, which served as the shop's modest office. His voice immediately cut off mid-sentence as he took in the sight of his sister holding the hand of a strange man. His eyes narrowed as the line of his jaw hardened. His voice took on a sharp tone, one that toed a murky line between being a tad dangerous and a bit defensive all at the same time. "What's going on, Tempe?"

"Russ," Brennan began, offering her older brother a relaxed smile as she chose her words carefully. She could sense the tension roiling off her long-absent lover's tall frame in waves and she wanted to ease her protective sibling's concern without drawing undue suspicion. "I'm sorry to disturb you because I know you're busy. But, this is a friend of mine, and I need to speak with him."

"Weren't you already doing that?" Russ asked, as he shot Booth a suspicious look. "I heard you talking before, but I thought it was just another ordinary customer."

Quickly shaking her head, Brennan glanced at Booth before she looked back to Russ and answered in a slightly softer tone of voice, "No...no, he's many things, but he's not ordinary." Booth's brows quirked and he couldn't hold back a toothy grin at hearing the compliment, the sound of which gave him a bit of a boost as he rolled his shoulders back and puffed out his chest, glancing briefly at Russ out of the corner of his eye as he tore his gaze away from the happy glint in Brennan's blue eyes.

At hearing her words combined with the unusual softened look that graced Brennan's face as she looked at Booth, Russ pursed his lips. "Yeah, Tempe," he said, his deep-seated skepticism evident in the subtle way his voice wavered as he spoke. "Well, it seems like you're close enough so that he can hear you, so why not just go on doing what you were doing and just talk here?"

"Because, Russ," Brennan said, so suddenly and sharply that even Booth was taken slightly aback by the abrupt change in her voice.

Booth's brow furrowed as he recalled her using this same tone with him during the first days of his inquisition of her. He felt his gut flutter at hearing her voice tighten and her pitch rise as she straightened her back and leveled a firm stare in her older brother's direction. Booth couldn't help but smirk at seeing her disabuse Russ of any possible notion that she was going to be cowed into doing anything but exactly what she wanted to do. _That's my Bren, _he thought. _God, I've missed you. _He was pleased, but not at all surprised, to see her assert herself as a sister with the same confidence that she did as a woman in any other compartment of her life. He quietly cleared his throat as he tried to ignore the faint tingle emanating from the base of his spine as he watched her put her brother firmly in his place.

"I need to speak with him in _private_," she said pointedly, "and I can't do that here with customers coming and going every other minute. So, please, be a dear and mind the shop for a while until Father comes back. He was just riding to consult on a case at the hospital at St. Bartholomew's, but I expect him back at any moment. You shouldn't be away from your ledgers from very long, I promise."

"I don't know, Tempe," Russ began to protest, his lip curling up as his dark brown eyes hardened and he shot Booth a suspicious glare. He grunted, strummed his fingers on the burnished wood of the countertop, then sighed. "You know old Mistress Fitzwalter is coming in this afternoon, and you're the only one she ever lets fill her order."

Brennan rolled her eyes. "It's true she prefers to deal with me," she acknowledged, "seeing as how I delivered her last three children, but if I'm not here, I'm quite sure that she'll still let you put together her fortnightly package of foxglove and hawthorn for her ailing heart. You're perfectly capable of minding the counter and dispensing basic preparations on your own, Russ. And, besides, I'll only be gone for a short while. I'll probably be back before she even gets here. And if anyone comes in with a special request that you don't feel capable of handling, you may ask them to kindly wait for either Father or me to come back. I'm sure you can handle it..."

"It's not that I can't handle it," Russ grumbled, frustrated that his sister had cleverly left him with the choice of admitting he was incapable of manning the shop on his own or conceding that there was no business reason why she couldn't step away for a few minutes. "But we both know, keeping the books and working with numbers is what my job here is, not the science-y part of things that has always been more your realm and Father's than ever it was mine," Russ said with a bit of an annoyed grunt coloring his speech. He then turned to give Booth a long, appraising look. He noted how close his sister stood to the tall, well-built man with the penetrating eyes and heavy brow—close enough that their hands nearly touched—and he felt a flash of protectiveness as the other man shifted his weight from one hip to other and leaned even closer to her. "I just, well, I'm not sure, Tempe," Russ said. "Do you really think that it's even appropriate, for you to leave with this man? I mean—"

She shot her brother a look that Russ recognized as one that warned whoever was on the receiving end of it not to trifle with Temperance Brennan, quickly quieting him as she shook her head. "We're going to the house now," she told him firmly, her teeth slightly bared as she hesitated for a brief moment to see whether her brother would challenge her again. "We're going to talk, in private, Russ. Now, mind the counter until Father returns, please."

Booth cocked an impressed eyebrow and made no attempt to bite back a smirk as he watched Brennan's brother scowl and mumble under his breath but offer no real resistance. He turned to her with a goofy grin and leaned in, bringing his hand to the small of her back as he began to whisper to her, but felt her pull away from him just as his fingertips touched the back of her dress as she whirled around and grabbed his hand again. Booth barely realized what was happening when Brennan began dragging him towards the rear exit of the shop that deposited them in a courtyard. Booth was surprised by the small enclosed space that held the remnants of a small vegetable garden and a larger herb garden lightly dusted in frost that bordered either side of the narrow cobblestone path and led to a moderately-sized, two-story thatch-roofed brown and white house in the distance.

"Come on," Brennan said as she pulled him towards the house, tugging his arm in the direction of the front door. "No one's at home since Russ is at the shop and Father's away. We can talk there."

Booth hesitated, blinking a couple of times as a rosy blush dotted his cheeks, partly from the cold and in part because he felt suddenly self-conscious as he stood literally on her doorstep after so many months spent dreaming of seeing her face again. He stood in the courtyard and glanced up at the frosted-over windows on the second story of the wattle and daub house. _This is her home, _he thought to himself. _This is the only place she wanted to get back to so badly when we were together. I'm here...I'm finally here. With her. I never thought this would ever come to pass, but here I am...finally. Here with her, just like I promised. _Booth couldn't help but smile as he realized the truth of his words as he realized that now that one promise had been kept, there were other things that needed to be dealt with...for better or worse, no matter what the outcome would be. _God help us, _Booth thought with an excited smile on his lips. _God help me_.

For a couple of seconds, Booth stood there, looking up at the pair of windows on that side of the house and wondered which one was her bedroom. He felt an odd tremble in his limbs as he felt a strange dissonance between, on the one hand, the joy of being near her again after spending so many months so far away from her. Then, on the other, there was the unmoored feeling of not knowing what had happened in the ensuing months or whether the creeping suspicions he had was true even as he quickly pushed a small voice—one that was an almost automatic reflex in being slightly annoyed at her unilateral ordering of him about like he was her inferior—aside in favor of the other, more positive feelings he'd experienced for her in the last half hour. He took a deep breath, nodded and, taking one last look at the upstairs window, quickly followed Brennan through the door and into the house.

A few minutes later, the pair stood in the middle of what served as the family's sitting room. Brennan extended a tankard of ale that she'd retrieved from the kitchen to Booth, who gratefully took the beverage, since he'd found himself awfully parched since she had broken the news to him that she was not, in fact, married as he'd initially thought.

"So," she said as she smiled softly at him at him once he'd emptied the tankard in a few gulps and set it down on a nearby table.

"So," he said with a slightly uneasy grin, letting his fingers caress the shiny wood of the table on which he'd set his mug. He drummed his fingers on the table and looked up at her again, his brows raised expectantly as he hoped she'd break the awkward silence between them.

"So," she repeated, for the first time some of the nervousness she felt creeping into her voice. Swallowing once, she took a deep breath and then looked away from him before she spoke.

Booth felt her tear her gaze away and winced, a wave of uncertainty swirling through his belly as he he pressed his lips together in a firm line and swallowed hard. His eyes skimmed over the line of her square jaw, along her slender, shapely neck and over her bosom—which he noted with a faint smile was even more ample than he remembered it when he saw it bare and heaving the night they made love for the last time—and finally to her round, pregnant belly which he itched to touch again, even as his chest ached at not knowing whether the child that grew therein was his or some other man's. He closed his eyes and sighed, his lips moving in a soundless prayer as he silently begged Brennan to put him out of his misery.

_God forgive me, _he murmured as he opened his eyes and took a sharp breath as their eyes met again. _And, God help me because, as much as I've ever thought it and prayed for Your help, I really think I'm going to need it._

"Booth," she finally began in a quiet voice that he almost had to struggle to hear even as he slowly exhaled a huge deep breath of relief. "You know I've always been plainspoken, so I see no need to mince words...especially not over something as important as this."

"Bren, please," he whispered, swallowing thickly as he felt his heart begin to race. "I have to know..."

She saw the pleading look in his warm brown eyes and watched his Adam's apple bob up and down in his throat as he stood there, his forehead deeply creased as he waited for her to speak, holding his breath as if his entire world hung on her next words. He tilted his head slightly and a faint smile curved the corners of his lips—lips she had longed to feel against hers for so long she could scarcely remember what it felt like in the brief month that he was hers. That faint smile melted the last of her lingering reticence, and Brennan gave him a small nod before she finally spoke.

"This child—you know it's yours?" she asked, her voice a bit rough as she stared at him. "Don't you?"

Booth felt his heart skip a beat and his gut do somersaults as he considered how best to phrase his response. At last, he took a step towards her, but didn't reach out with his hand―even though he very much in that moment wanted to touch her―as he simply said, "If you say the child is mine, Bren, then it is. I believe you." He nodded at her and, after a second, added with a smile, "I know you don't lie."

Slowly, she turned to look up at him. As she searched for the warm sincerity that she hoped to find in his eyes, a beautiful smile broke across her face as she reached out and closed the distance between them. Cupping his stubbled jaw in her hand, she nodded and said softly, "It's yours."

Booth, desperately wanting to reach forward and wrap Brennan up in his arms, was forestalled from doing so when a larger bang suddenly interrupted the moment and a furious looking pair of blue eyes stared at the pair―or, really just at Booth―in blatant accusation.

"You son of a bitch!" Matthew Brennan growled, which was really the only warning that Booth had before the older man lunged for him.

Booth swung his head around and gasped, "What the―?" His exclamation was cut off mid-sentence by a hard right hook that landed squarely over Booth's left brow with a sharp thud, blinding him with pain as he heard little but a loud ringing in his ears and, after a moment, brought his hand up to cup his eye as he felt a dull throbbing sensation and tried to blink away the warm trickle that dribbled past the corner of his eye.

"Father!" Brennan shouted as she saw Matthew's fist fly through the air and strike Booth, causing the younger man to stumble from the unexpected violent onslaught.

Booth fell to the ground and lay there, stunned, for several seconds, his eyes glassy as he tried to shake off the surprise blow. Matthew bent over and moved to straddle Booth's prone body as he lay on the floor, but in the brief seconds it took him to kneel down and straddle the younger man, Booth regained his senses, grabbed Matthew by the shoulders and wrestled him to the ground, rolling them over in a single, swift move so that, moments later, it was he who occupied the superior position.

"Booth, no!" Brennan cried out as she ran over and grabbed Booth by his doublet and tried to pull him off her father.

Booth drew his right arm back and punched Matthew Brennan in the mouth, splitting his lip before rearing back for another punch. Brennan grabbed Booth's shoulders, but he twisted out of her grasp as he punched her father once more, this time in the nose. As the blood began to dribble out of Matthew's nostril, Brennan finally managed to pull Booth off her father as he slowly rose to his feet.

"You don't know anything about me," Booth growled as he reached up and wiped the blood from the cut over his eyebrow. "How dare you presume _anything _about me, or―"

Matthew Brennan sat up and leveled a hard, angry stare at Booth. "You..." He made a sharp, throat-clearing sound and spat a wad of phlegm and blood at the younger man's feet. "You forked-tongued, double-crossing, conniving, papist bastard," he hissed, his nostrils flaring as he remembered his one and only other meeting with the dark-eyed man who stood before him. Although more than six months had passed since that sunny morning in the stables, he remembered it as clearly as if it were yesterday.

_He narrowed his eyes and stared at the Dominican priest who stood before him, even as Booth gave him a defiant look and turned away to resume checking the fittings of his saddle as he waited for a reply. _

_"What are you saying?" he eventually asked when he saw that the priest was doing his best to act like Matthew hadn't intimidated him. Shaking his head, the apothecary said, "That makes absolutely no sense. Even a poor, unlearned sap like me knows that. So, tell me. Why is she being released, after all of what you people have put her through? What's happened? What's really going on here?"_

_Booth shrugged slightly, but didn't turn around to face the older man from where he continued to tend to his horse. "We've concluded our investigation into the charges that had been levied against your daughter," he said. "She's being released because the findings of the Inquisition are that she did not engage in the witchcraft and the sorcery of which she was accused." Booth ran his thick fingers along the leather strap that fastened the saddle under the horse's chest, checking for cracks, tears or wet-rot. "After weeks of interviews and investigation, my inquest determined that those accusations against her were false and the testimony against her given under perjury. So, to answer your question, Master Brennan, simply put...well, your daughter is being released because she has been found innocent of the most serious of her charges. It's true, she did admit to embracing and perpetuating heretical views, but since she's confessed to those charges, she can pay a fine and do penance for them. Those charges were minor and were the only ones that stood in the way of her freedom once the charges of witchcraft were dismissed as baseless slander."_

_"You believed her?" Matthew asked, his voice very nearly a sneer as he narrowed his eyes in obvious suspicion. "But, why would you believe her now? You and your papist friends were the ones that were responsible for her being tried as a sorceress in the first place. Why would you have such a change of heart? It makes absolutely no sense."_

_"Yes, yes it does make sense," Booth told him. The priest did his best to keep his face neutral as he glanced over his shoulder to see the bewildered yet still distrustful look on the apothecary's face even as he slid his hand under the saddle blanket to make check for burrs or other irritants that might disquiet the horse once they began the first portion of their impending journey, which he knew would be a long and arduous journey for him, even if his steed would be returned to the custody of the parish church at St. Laurence-in-Thanet before he made his way down to the Ramsgate waterfront to embark for Calais._

_"It makes perfect sense," Booth said again. "I merely did as any good lawyer should do." He smiled faintly and gave Matthew a slight nod with his chin. "I did my job, Master Brennan, which was always to find out whether your daughter was innocent or guilty of the charges that had been levied against her. My job wasn't to just find manufactured proof that would corroborate a presumption of guilt. As such, I kept an open mind and let the evidence lead me to the truth of things. That was it. That was all I did."_

_Matthew continued to stare at him, and then he cocked his head as he asked, "That was it? That was all you did?"_

"You two-faced, lying son of a spotted whore," the old apothecary snarled, narrowing his eyes as he thumbed a trickle of blood off his upper lip with the side of his thumb. "You don't deserve to breathe the same air she does, much less touch her even though I know you've done more than your fair share of both!" He noted that Booth's left eyebrow was cut and he was bleeding from the wound, taking some satisfaction at having drawn blood before the younger, stronger man laid him out with a blow of his own. "You piss-ant papist prick," he snuffled, shifting his jaw from side to side as he wiped the blood that was oozing from his nostrils with the palm of his hand. "You dirty rotten bastard―you nearly broke my nose."

"Father!" Brennan barked. Matthew's head jerked in the direction of her sharp voice. His cool blue eyes widened with surprise and the snarl on his lips quickly faded to a petulant frown as she rebuked him**,** feeling a slight betrayal that stung at her response. "You've a lot of gall to complain about him hitting you," she said, the assignment of who she was blaming in the exchange clear in her wording. "You deserved it―you hit him first."

Booth stared at Matthew with a deeply furrowed brow, took a long breath and walked over to him, offering him his hand. "Come on," he said gruffly. "Get up." Matthew's eyes narrowed suspiciously as he glanced over at his daughter, whose icy glare suggested she was not immediately prepared to help him off the sitting room floor. "That's it," Booth muttered as Matthew accepted his hand and stood up, a bit wobbly at first. The two men stood nearly nose to nose as Booth stared down at Matthew, who was a good two or three inches shorter, with eyes as black as pitch.

"What are you even doing here?" Brennan asked, letting out an exasperated sigh. "You were supposed to be at the hospital."

"I was," Matthew said. "But, when I came back to the shop, your brother said some strange man showed up here and was touching you and that you just went off with him, and Russ was just worried it might be something—"

Brennan's head leaned sharply to the side as she rolled her eyes and breathed a clearly audible sigh. A dismissive puff of air passed between her lips, and Matthew noted her disdain to which he could only defend with a weak shrug.

"Yeah, well, he's your brother, Tempe," he continued. "He was worried, and he wanted me to check on you since you apparently told him to stay in the shop, and he didn't want to piss you off even further than you were already apparently annoyed with him, so I told him I would go..."

"I'm fine," Brennan said firmly, her fine, dark eyebrows drawing hard over her eyes which glimmered brightly with anger and impatience. She grunted and shook her head at the presumptuousness of the men in her family who thought, despite all she'd been through, that she was incapable of taking care of herself. "Why did you hit him?"

"Because!" Matthew barked, his eyes darting over to glare at Booth as he clenched his teeth, trying to settle his heaving breath as he resisted the twitchy impulse to launch himself at the priest again. "He has no right to touch you like he was touching you."

Brennan rolled her eyes at her father's obvious overprotectiveness. "If I didn't want him touching me, rest assured, as you well know, he wouldn't be. Now, as I told Russ, everything is fine, but I need to speak with Booth alone." Matthew arched an eyebrow at her words, and the look he shot Brennan wasn't lost on his daughter. "_Alone _and _in private_," she repeated. Nodding her head towards the door, but leaving no doubt in the fact that she was dismissing him, Brennan added, "We'll talk later, Father. I promise...after I've looked to Booth's wounds."

"What about me?" Matthew grumbled, his swelling, split lower lip exaggerating the pouting look he gave her as his bushy faded blond eyebrows hung low over his bereft eyes. "I'm the one that's really hurt here, Tempe."

"You're perfectly able to look to yourself, I think," Brennan said as she gave her father an apprising look. "So, for now, please—get out of here. Go back to the shop so that Booth and I—"

"_Booth?_" Matthew asked with a dismissive snicker as he took a step towards the door, pausing for a moment and turning around to face his daughter and her companion. "Is that what he's calling himself now?"

His jaw hard and ticking with barely-contained anger, Booth briefly considered taking a step towards Matthew but thought better of it and patiently held his ground as he watched Brennan subject her own father to her withering glare, uttering only a throaty grunt as he met Matthew's stare with his own.

Matthew wiped a tacky streak of drying blood off his lip and shook his head. "Because don't think that I don't know you, priest. Robes or doublet, I'd never forget the face of the man that jailed my daughter and kept her away from her family for almost three months."

"He's not here about that, Father," Brennan told her father with a dismissive wave of her hand. "So, stop that, please?"

"Oh really?" Matthew said suspiciously. "Then, what does he want?"

"That's between him and me," she said as she gave her father another small push towards the front door. "Now, out," she said. "Get out. Leave us be for now. I need to speak with him."

Matthew Brennan's mouth opened but, for several long seconds, no words came out. He took a breath, his eyes darting between his daughter and the tall, dark-eyed man with the bloody, split eyebrow who stood next to her. "Fine," he finally said. "I don't like it, but, fine—I'm going."

"Good," Brennan said with a small nod of her head. "Thank you."

"I'll be in the shop," he growled as he turned and walked out the door.

"Fine," Brennan said. "I'll come and get you when we're done here." Her father shot her one more questioning look before he disappeared out the front door. "Goodbye," she said tersely.

The door latched hard behind them, leaving the pair standing in silence for a few moments staring at the closed door before Booth sensed she was looking at him and turned to her with an awkward grin. He acknowledged her an amused flash of his eyebrows then winced as the gesture tugged at the cut her father's slugging blow had opened on his brow.

His hand flew up and he covered his faintly-throbbing eye with his hand. He wiped his brow and glanced down to look at the blood on his fingertips, then shrugged and looked up at her with a widening smile, letting his gaze settle into the deep blue of her eyes. After a moment, he pursed his lips and let his eyes fall to her swollen middle and, though he did not take a step towards her, he brought his eyes up to meet hers again and felt a profound nearness to her even though she stood several feet away.

"Bren," he said, breathing her name as his chest warmed with a sense of well-being and contentment that he hadn't felt in over a half a year.

"Yes, Booth?"

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**A/N: **_So there you go. You knew it had to be his baby, right? Not even Dharmasera is mean enough to knock her up with someone else's child, right? _*pause* _Okay, don't answer that :-) In any case, there you have it. Booth returns from Rome to find out that the woman who stole his heart is having his baby. Be still, our hearts!_

_Of course, all is not as easy as it would be for a pregnant, unmarried couple in, say, 2011. Matthew Brennan is clearly not pleased. And having a child out of wedlock in 1559 is, suffice it to say, a very big deal. Booth and Brennan just reunited after a long separation. They don't even know what they are to each other yet, aside from being parents to an unborn child. How will Booth react as the reality of the situation sinks in? How will the couple handle Bren's father? How will Booth support his impending instant family? And what about the parting request that Cardinal Pole made of him before he sent Booth to Rome six months earlier? How will that affect things for the young couple? Oh, the drama! _

_Wow. B&B together and expecting! Isn't it great? You folks must be having all kinds of warm and cuddly feelings right now, huh? Admit it. You totally are. If so, you should express those feelings in written form, letting us know what you think of this completely one-of-a-kind Bones fanfic. We'd kindly appreciate it. _

_In any case, thanks for reading and supporting this wacky venture of ours...until the next chapter, enjoy!_

**Editorial note: **_ The title of this chapter was inspired by some of the writings of Martin Luther. How's that for a fun fact? Consider it just another Dharmasera service as we entertain and educate all at once. Hurrah!_


	4. Chapter 3: Rekindling, Part I

**The Return**

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**By:** dharmamonkey & Lesera128  
**Rated: **M  
**Disclaimer: **So, we're still here, and by now, we know as well as you do that we don't own anything. However, we are looking into ways to take control of this sandbox via adverse possession. ::blinks:: Okay, not really. But you get the gist.

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**A/N: **_Okay, okay. Yes, we are aware that this chapter is posting significantly beyond when we'd originally projected. Well, real life intervened and kept throwing impediments in our way. But enough about the past. We have a new chapter for you all! Last we left our brave heroes, Booth had just won a UFC-style smackdown with Brennan's father, Matthew, in the sitting room which left both combatants a little bloodied but really no worse for the wear. Brennan herself is still pregnant (duh) and now they're alone, at last, in her home. They have lots of catching up to do. So, without further ado on our part, read on!_

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**Chapter 3: Rekindling, Part I**

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As the front door slammed shut with a resounding and, it seemed to her, perhaps insulted _thud_ on her father's behalf, Brennan stared at it for a minute. She was somewhat surprised that her father had _actually _done as she'd asked, given how prickly he'd been in the months since she'd revealed her pregnancy to him. Shaking her head with a small, private sigh, she then turned to Booth. Their eyes met once more when he realized she was staring at him and he turned around to look at her.

After responding inquiringly after he whispered her name, she waited for him to say something, anything, to break the awkward silence between them as they simply looked at one another with faint, if not somewhat puzzled, smiles on their lips.

Booth flashed his eyebrows and gave her a sheepish grin as he glanced once more out of the corner of his eye at the door before settling his gaze on hers. "I, uhhh, well..." He frowned at the sound of his lame stammering, shrugged and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't think..." He looked down at his feet and cleared his throat, then raised his eyes again. "I'm sorry I struck your father," he said. "But I couldn't—"

Brennan tilted her head and smiled at his endearing uncertainty. "Please," she said with a mildly dismissive wave of her hand. "He struck you first. As far as I'm concerned he deserved what you served back to him." She paused, then chuckled softly and said, "Though I must admit, I was a bit surprised that you handled yourself...well, in the way that you did because it's quite obvious that you are rather well-skilled at fighting and quick with your physical reflexes..."

Booth shook his head and his brow knit in a mixed look of abashment and mild confusion, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he wondered whether to consider the remark an insult or a compliment.

"Well," Brennan quickly amended, when she saw his response. "That is, I just meant...considering your occupation and all."

At hearing her refer to his being a priest, Booth's jaw shifted and he remembered the last time he'd seen her father:

_"So you were just going to leave, were you?" a male voice asked, nearly causing Booth to jump out of his own skin with surprise._

_Booth turned around and stared at the man, whose familiar-looking pale eyes and fading dirty blond hair caused the priest to squint as he tried to figure out where he'd seen him before. He guessed the tall and solidly built man, whose clothes—by the quality, cut, and style of his attire—suggested he was a reasonably successful craftsman of some sort, was in his mid-fifties._

_"Who are you?" Booth asked him, his eyebrows hanging low and hard over his eyes as he watched the man step out of the shadow of the adjoining stall and into the sunlight._

_"You don't know me, huh?" the man said, his pale eyes twinkling with a contemptuous laugh that, for reasons Booth could not articulate, made him extremely uneasy. "Well, that's a mistake on your part, priest, because for as someone as smart as they all claim you to be, I'd think you definitely should know me."_

_Booth lifted his hand to reach into his satchel but, with a movement of catlike efficiency, the man's left hand flew out and stilled Booth's at the same time that his other hand unsheathed a dagger with a metallic hiss and, before Booth could recognize the silvery flash in the corner of his eye, pressed the side of the blade against his neck, the sharp point pressing into the skin that covered Booth's jugular vein._

_"You were just going to leave her to rot in there, weren't you, you conniving papist bastard?"_

_"What?" Booth wheezed, his eyes blinking nervously as he stared down at the dagger's well-worn, dark brown leather-wrapped hilt as the point of the blade dug firmly into the skin of his neck. "I don't know what you're talking about," he coughed. He felt the knife press harder against his windpipe as he struggled for air. Booth's voice was choked to no more than a silent gasp as he croaked, "Have mercy, for the love of God."_

_"Like you had mercy for her?" came a growl. The dangerous tone of the man's voice told Booth that he'd misspoken, and he winced as he felt his supply of oxygen begin to dwindle._

_"I don't...know...what...you're...talking about," Booth panted. "But...if you'll sheathe...your weapon and tell me who you are, I'm sure—" He stopped talking in what was no more than a whisper of a growl as he coughed a bit for air, taking in what breaths he could even as the dagger cut into his skin. "—we can discuss this matter...calmly and without fear of either one of us...shedding any blood unnecessarily." Booth coughed again before he asked, "If you're going to slit my throat...don't you think I at least deserve to know what I did first? For the love of God, man. Please."_

_The man narrowed his eyes and pressed the point of the blade into Booth's neck once more for emphasis before releasing it. "Damn lawyers," he snorted as he pushed Booth away, and he watched with some pleasure as the younger man fell to the ground gasping for air. "All of you, whether you practice before the common law courts or at the behest of churchmen, you're always trying to use that tongue of yours to get you out of whatever corner you've rightly painted yourself into. What a load of tripe and horseshite." _

He felt a small swell of male pride at the thought that he had—though he wasn't sure Brennan knew the circumstances of his first encounter with Matthew Brennan—at least somewhat redeemed himself by laying the other man on the ground in self-defense instead of meekly begging for his mercy. It was then that he grinned and laughed, some of the nervousness and awkwardness dissolving away as he stood up a little straighter at hearing her praise him.

"I had three older brothers," he told her. "I had to learn to fight if only to keep my arse from being kicked on a daily basis by my brothers."

"Hmm," she murmured, her eyes shimmering with amusement as she narrowed her gaze and tried to imagine the broad-shouldered, heavy-browed man before her as a rosy-cheeked, silky-haired young boy enduring the humiliation of being teased and bullied by his older siblings. "I suppose it's a good thing, then, because my father came in here madder than a speared boar."

"Yeah," Booth said, his voice suddenly darkening as the smile on his face faded and was replaced by a scowl. "Well, I don't think your father likes me much."

"That would be a mild understatement, I think," she said thoughtfully, her lips pursed for a second as she reflected on the early months of her pregnancy before she turned her gaze back to meet Booth's. "A truly mild understatement, actually."

Booth's forehead creased as his frown gave way to a look of blank confusion. "Wait, what?" he asked. "Before today, I'd met him exactly once. For perhaps all of ten minutes—just long enough to tender to him that letter I left for you before I had to leave Lambeth. Has he...I mean, did he say something about me, you know, in the time that I was gone? Did you...umm, well...did you tell him...about us?" Booth's words fell clumsily from his mouth as he blinked and shook his head. "I know he doesn't care for priests. Or Catholics, for that matter. I knew that not a half-minute after meeting him." He shrugged and winced, reaching up and wiping his thumb across his bloodied brow. He grunted and glanced at his thumb, staring at the smear of tacky blood for a moment before he sighed and said, "I guess we're just two completely different sorts of men, he and I."

Tilting her head, Brennan licked her lips slowly as she said in an almost far away voice, "Oh, I don't know. You might be surprised to find that my father and you have more than one or two things in common...not to suggest that I am some kind of Electra to my father's Agamemnon or anything."

Booth quirked a brow at the reference, glancing up at the ceiling as he tried to remember the ancient Greek myth to which she referred, then grinned at hearing yet another example of how truly extraordinary a woman stood before him.

"Huh," he grunted with a laugh. "I'm not sure what you mean." He gave her a strange look, then said, "Although I have little doubt that you _would_ put a sword down someone's throat to avenge your father, I am quite sure that your father wouldn't hesitate to take a blade to someone who threatened you. But enough talk of the corrupt dramas of the heathen Greeks, Mistress..."

Brennan murmured as she considered his remark, then gave him a discerning look and asked, "Don't tell me that you're actually serious, Booth."

"What?" he asked. "That the Greeks were heathens? Yes, of that I'm quite certain," he told her with a playful grin.

"Right," she said with a roll of her eyes. "And so...what? You think I was corrupted by the reading of some Grecian plays by the masters of old?" A slightly disbelieving smirk spread across her face as she watched his dark eyes, the expression in which still seemed somewhat hooded in the wake of her father's abrupt appearance and departure. "It's not as if I made a reference to _Lysistrata_, Booth."

Booth's eyes widened at the latter reference, which drew a slight blush to his cheeks. "Now _that,_" he said. "That I think might be a corrupting influence, even on a broad-minded, well-read freewoman such as yourself. Your father let you read such things?" He shook his head and bit back a snicker. "Am I going to learn that you took a page from such a tome and you'll start using the withholding of certain, well...friendly affections to accomplish your goals?"

"_Sex_," Brennan said even as she waited for Booth to finish talking. "She led the women of her city-state in a protest where they stopped having sexual intercourse with the men of Athens despite their own great need to achieve orgasm themselves."

Flustered by her frankness and not a little surprised that she had, in fact, clearly read the drama in question, Booth felt his ears redden as he raked his hand through his hair. "Bren," he groaned. "Come on now." His brow furrowed and he gave her an odd look. "Your father honestly let you read such things as part of your tutelage in Greek? I wouldn't have been surprised that he let you read the Gospels in Greek, which in itself is daring enough, but..."

"You surprise me," she said. "I would have supposed you knew me better than that by now. Do you honestly think that I let my father censor me in any such way, particularly given how I make my livelihood?"

"How does the reading of heathen plays rife with lurid tales of fornication, or the withholding of such things, help you deliver babies?" he asked with a crooked brow. "I'm simply asking."

She considered his question and then shrugged. "As pregnancy cannot, as you well know..." She lifted her saucy gaze to meet his as she spoke. "...occur without a male engaging in coitus with a female to the point of ejaculation, it behooves me to have studied all representations of sex in history, Booth, but especially such a play told from the female perspective. Since you never know where you'll pick up valuable and useful information that can be used in my trade—whether it's because of actual medical knowledge or just having an interesting anecdote to share with my clients as I tend to their needs and make conversation."

Booth bit back a grin and tried to give her as hard a look as he could muster. "You're doing this on purpose," he said.

She chuckled at him. "Indeed not," she told him honestly. "You've just been coddled far too long in Rome."

"Coddled?" he squeaked. "Is that what you think I was doing there? You have the wrong idea entirely, then, woman. I slept on a straw pallet in a monk's cell and spent my days dividing my time between prayers and keeping myself busy reading in the Vatican Library while I waited for an audience with the Holy Father."

"Surrounded by stuffy old men whose idea of forward thinking is to allow women to leave the house on market days as opposed to keeping them cloistered in the home with the children," she said. She shook her head with a sigh, and then asked, "I suppose this would be a bad time to tell you that I read the poems of Catullus just as often as I read Cicero's letters when I was learning Latin, right?"

"Ah, so I should be thankful to the old poets of Rome for your wide-ranging knowledge and talents?" he asked with a smirk. "Which I must say, though I am not well-acquainted with many women, your repertoire seems quite exceptional—and definitely a pleasant surprise for me."

She narrowed her eyes playfully as she responded, her voice vaguely lyrical as she began to recite the well-remembered verse:

"_Flavius, unless your delights  
__were tasteless and inelegant,  
__you'd want to tell, and couldn't be silent.  
__Surely you're in love with some feverish  
__little whore: you're ashamed to confess it..."_

Booth's eyebrows flew up in surprise. "Not only have you read such corrupting works, but you've taken the time to devote them to memory? My, my..."

She laughed at him and then replied, once again in verse:

"_Now, pointlessly silent, you don't seem to be idle of night,  
__it's proclaimed by your bed garlanded, fragrant with Syrian perfume,  
__squashed cushions and pillows, here and there,  
__and the trembling frame shaken, quivering and wandering about.  
__But being silent does nothing for you.  
__Why? Spread thighs blab it's not so, if not quite what foolishness you commit."_

"That you would take the time to devote such verse to memory," he said with a flicker of laughter in his eyes, "suggests to me that you were corrupted long before you read such poets."

"Is that so?" she retorted. "Are you saying I have been corrupted?"

Booth arched his eyebrow. "No," he said, nibbling the inside of his lip and shaking his head. "Not really. If anything, it's you who's corrupted me. Before I met you, I was as pure as the driven snow—an innocent. You are the corruptress, I think." The twinkle in his dark eyes and the crooked grin on his face left no doubt that he was teasing her, a fact which gave Brennan a certain measure of reassurance to know that, despite the months that elapsed while they were apart, they could still banter between them as if not a single day had passed.

"Ahh," she laughed. "So the next thing you'll be telling me is that you were wrong before, hmm? That I actually _am _a witch who has bewitched you, hmmm? Because if that's it, you should tell me so I can at least warn my father this time before they come to haul me away again."

"Hmmm," he murmured, glancing away as he considered her words. Wagging his head to and fro as he gave it some thought, he turned back to her with a grin. "No," he said. "I think you corrupted me by worldly means, without recourse to anything supernatural or wicked in any unnatural way." He paused and pondered for a moment, the smile on his face slowly straightening as the rosy color seemed to fade a little from his cheeks as he found himself unable to keep from looking at the round swell of her pregnant belly and a flash of panic suddenly washed over him as the mention of her father and of her being hauled away extinguished some of his mirth. "I don't know, though," he said, his voice edged with a certain soberness. "It seems as though your father thinks I am the one who corrupted you. He clearly blames me for this."

Seeing the sudden change in his mood caused her brow to crease and worry to creep in. Trying to reassure him, she said, "Even if he does have some random thought as such—" Booth opened his mouth to say something, but Brennan shook her head and continued without taking so much as even the tiniest of breaths. "And, I'm not saying he does, by the way, I'm just saying if he did, we both know he'd be quite inaccurate in that supposition."

Booth frowned as he glanced over at the door and thought about the unadulterated fury he saw in her father's eyes when he charged into the house. He turned back to her, swallowed thickly and said, "Would he really, Bren? Because you know what? I think even if we set what's happened between you and me aside, he wouldn't care for me one bit. That much is as plain as day." He sighed and shrugged. "Perhaps it's to be expected, right? There's probably no two men alive who have less in common than your father, the reformist apothecary, and me, a papist..."

His voice trailed off as he struggled to define himself as he was now. He was no longer a priest, but he wasn't sure if even Brennan realized that, despite the fact that he'd alluded to the possibility in his parting letter to her six months earlier. Yet he still felt odd—as if he were caught in some kind of purgatory between the life he had and the life he was trying to make for himself—and he wasn't quite sure _what_ he really was.

He shrugged and said, "I just...I don't see how he and I have much of anything in common...except, I guess, that we both care for you."

Her face softened a bit as she considered his point. "Well, there's that, of course. But you're each also strong, brave, courageous, and deviously loyal in your duties, particularly to your families." She paused for a beat and then looked away as she added more to herself then for Booth's sake. "And I daresay you're both very good at not letting something go when you've chomped down and sunk your teeth into it."

Booth smiled faintly, his eyes narrowing as he wondered what exactly she meant by_ 'deviously loyal' _and whether or not her last remark was meant entirely as a compliment. He grunted, then fell silent for a few moments as he turned and looked back once more at the thick oaken door behind him. "I suppose I should be grateful he left so easily," he said sardonically. "You know, without drawing steel on me like he did the last time we met." He brought his hand up and touched the side of his neck as he remembered the way Matthew Brennan had pressed the flat of his dagger blade against Booth's jugular, then cleared his throat and shifted his hand, scratching the two days' worth of stubble on the underside of his jaw.

He stared at her round middle for several long seconds, then drew a long breath and brought his warm brown eyes up to meet hers again, a nervous, seemingly boyish grin on his face as he felt his heart begin to race. A part of him felt bouyed, hopeful and excited, to finally be standing there, just an arm's length away from her, after being separated from her for so long and enduring so many days and nights wondering whether she was alright and whether she had, in fact, waited for him as he had asked of her.

Another part of him, though, situated in the pit of his belly, roiled with uncertainty. So much had changed so quickly that he felt a bit dizzy, as if the world around him were spinning. He had expected to come back and find her, to sweep her into his arms as they kissed their hellos and murmured their I-can't-believe-you-are-really-here's, but as it happened, it was far more complex than that. He wasn't even sure he understood all of what had changed—aside from the obvious fact that he was no longer a priest and she was now pregnant with his child.

_What are we to one another, she and I? _he wondered. _What happens next? Do we do it, whatever in the world 'it' is, together? Do we do it apart? Does it happen as some odd mixture of the two? And what does __she__ want? She says she wants me, I know...but does she really want __me__—the man I am? Does she really want all of me...and if she does, will she still want me when she knows how things have changed so completely? God...I don't know where we should even start...but...maybe she does? Maybe...together? Maybe __together__ we can figure out not only what we're supposed to do, what we want to do...but what we're actually going to do. _

For a minute, he silently prayed that maybe she could understand what he was thinking without him having to verbalize it as he refused to break eye contact with her. So, they stayed like that, simply staring into one another's eyes, neither of them speaking, until finally he was unable to stand not knowing what she was thinking and so broke the silence.

"Bren?"

As his low whisper fractured the silence between them, Brennan's gaze moved from his eyes—the same warm, soft brown eyes that captivated her from the very first minutes after she was brought into his interrogation room more than seven months earlier—to his mouth. She looked at his slender upper lip, dotted as it was with dark stubble, and then at his lower lip, soft and pink and almost pouting the way it seemed to puff out from underneath the one above. Brennan found herself slipping into a tangle of memories as her eyes skimmed the outline of that pouty lower lip, and she remembered the first time she felt his lips on hers, the morning they set aside everything that loomed between them and gave in to the rising tide of passionate want that had bubbled between them for so long.

She remembered the night before that, the night he came to her in her cell, nearly beside himself with desperate want and completely confounded by how it made him feel, and how he had broken down and begged her for relief, so inexperienced that he struggled to find the words to ask for what he needed. In the end, he'd taken her hand and held it first to his racing heart, and then to the place between his legs where his body burned so furiously for her. She recalled the way the low hum of her own desires flared and nearly overwhelmed her when at last she held him in her hand and felt how badly he wanted her.

"_That means...you touched yourself," Brennan mused out loud, the roaring in her ears increasing as the picture of him completely naked and stroking himself made her go weak in the knees and wet with want of him. "You touched yourself," she whispered a second time, the blood rushing to her ears as she pictured him sprawled out on a bed, hard because of her...and waiting just for her. "You touched yourself because of want...of me?" To emphasize her point, she pumped him a couple of times from base to tip and back again, eliciting a strangulated growl to emerge involuntarily from his throat. "Yes?" she asked as a point of clarification._

_Booth, feeling overwhelmed at the sensations she caused him to feel could only furiously nod his head in the affirmative._

"_When you did this," Brennan asked, true curiosity prodding her on. "Were you...that is, what happened? Were you thinking of me?"_

_Booth's nostrils began to flare again as he thought about her question. He thought of how her face had looked in his fantasy, half-hidden by the latticework of the confessional screen, and how her pale eyes had shone through, drilling deeply into him as he had fallen into a spiral of sounds and images of her body, flushed and beaded with sweat beneath him as he'd drilled into her, again and again in his mind's eye until he exploded in his own hand as he moaned her name. He could feel the warmth in his face growing even more as he knew himself to be flushing as bright a red as possible from his nose to the tips of his ears and everything in between. He said nothing for a minute, but as Brennan chose that moment to increase the speed with which her hand was stroking him, causing him to be yanked literally back from his memories of the previous evenings as he cried out an answer...and encouragement to her ministrations._

"_Yeeeeessss__," he hissed as his head lolled to the side and his eyelids fluttered with pleasure. "Oh, God...yes. I did...I did. Yes, I did."_

A smile curved her lips as she remembered his first ever confession to her, and she flushed a bit when she recalled the delight she took in seeing his body bathed in moonlight a week later, the night he came to her and surprised her with his openness and curiosity as he tucked his head between her legs and dragged that soft, pink, pouty lower lip and the rough yet velvety smooth tongue it concealed over places of her body that made her want him even more. She faintly remembered the way he'd looked at her when she looked down at him after her body had shuddered, and he lifted his head from between her legs with a pleased, boyish look.

"_God, I love it when you do that," he murmured to her. "So...damn...much...just love it. Love you when you're like that..."_

Blinking away the memory, she couldn't help but lick her own lips again as she tore her gaze away from his mouth and brought her eyes back up to meet the deep, rich wells of mahogany that flickered back at her as she suddenly realized something important. She now knew that what she'd felt just a short time before when he'd entered the shop—proving that he'd finally kept his word to her as he'd promised in his farewell letter—wasn't just relief. It was more than that...so much more. And, even as she realized the enormity of that point, another exchange between them echoed in her mind.

_Booth opened his mouth to speak, then hesitated, his mouth hanging open as he narrowed his eyes and glanced over once more to the flickering taper as he gathered his thoughts. "If I remain here in London, as is my intent and expectation, and if I remain a priest, which is my only option at this point, having taken sacred vows from which I cannot absolve myself even if I wanted to, would you be willing...or dare I say even be interested...in continuing to let this thing that has happened between us unfold...at least, until we can find some other workable solution to our situation?" He shook his head, as he suddenly felt as if they'd somehow ended up speaking in very large and repetitive circles. "What do you want, Bren? Tell me. Whatever it is, and I'll give it to you. Just tell me. What do you want from me?"_

_The words tumbled from her mouth as his question, at last, became easy for her to answer. "I-I want...I want there always to be honesty between us," she began. "And, although I know it will never be easy, I would want there always to be an agreement that we would do what we can to please the other. I would...I would never have either of us cause the other pain or uncertainty or doubt. I would have us take what pleasure and contentment where we can, when we can in the times we can share with one another. I would...I would have us take things as they come. And I want you to have trust and faith in me...just as I believe I already do for you. That—" _

_Thinking back on her words, Brennan felt a bloom of confidence unfurl in her chest as she nodded and smiled at him. _

"_That's what I want from you, Booth," she said. "Now, the next question is...can you give all that to me?"_

"_I think we both know I've already started to," he said quietly. "I __do__ have trust and faith in you, Bren," he whispered, stroking his thumb over the top of her hand which he still held clasped tightly in his own. "I always have," he added solemnly._

Biting her lip, Brennan suddenly chastised herself. For all that had happened between them, nothing had changed. They were right back to where they were all those months ago...at least _she _was. And, with that realization, she knew that before anything else could happen, she needed to know if it was the same for him. Knowing that information could only come if she admitted as much to him first, she took a deep breath and began to speak.

"I missed you," she said, her voice a bit more quiet and a bit more gentle as she tipped her head to one side, but never let her eyes fall away from his. "More than I think I was willing to admit, even to myself, until just this very moment."

For several long seconds, Booth said nothing at all, and instead just stared back at her with surprise and curiosity writ on his face. Days and weeks and months had gone by as he'd languished in Rome for most of a sweltering summer and all of a warm, breezy fall before the chill of winter set in. And each morning as he'd watched the sun rise over the _campanile _of the Basilica di Santa Sabina all'Aventino, and heard the _campanile_'s massive bell ring out over the complex, he'd wondered if she was watching the same dawn a thousand miles to the north and what thoughts were rolling through her groggy mind as she did so. He'd hoped and prayed that she was well and happy, and even if he thought it was a bit selfish on his part, he also desperately wished that she was thinking of him even just half as often as he thought of her.

Chasing the memory away with a flutter of his eyes, his mouth fell open with an awkward, almost bashful grin as he finally asked, "Did you really?"

He remembered all the dream-images of her that acted as a temporary balm for his aching heart during their unexpected and very long separation. As he did so, he couldn't help but smile since it sounded like she'd just given him the answer to one of the questions that he'd very much wondered about. She'd not only been thinking about him, but she'd missed him. The thought made another flash of pleasing warmth blossom in his chest as he hesitantly dared to hope that he hadn't somehow misheard her. It sounded to him that, despite their distance, just as _she _had consumed _his _every waking moment, it appeared that likewise _she _had found herself distracted during the day by thoughts of _him_.

Needing to know for certain, he licked his bottom lip as the tip of his tongue darted out the corner of his mouth. "Did you really think about me, you know, while I was away?" he asked. "Did you?"

Brennan took a moment, nodded at him, but still turned away slightly. "I won't do something as trite as ask if you missed me," she said quietly. He was slightly surprised when he felt he recognized her response as Brennan tried to maintain control of her emotions. His suspicion was confirmed when she paused for a beat and then sighed in what was clear frustration, even as she tried to muffle it.

She chewed on her bottom lip for a minute and then said, "I hate this." At hearing her words, Booth blinked, his temples pulsing as his eyes widened and he felt a flash of fear deep in his belly as he wondered if she perhaps didn't care for him the way he cared for her. He turned his head slightly to the side and took a breath, holding it as he waited for her to speak again. "I absolutely hate having to admit points that are tied to my emotional vulnerabilities," she added.

Booth's cheeks flushed in obvious relief at her words, his eyes widening a bit as he let go of the breath he'd been holding. A smile curved his lips and lent a certain brightness to his voice as he opened his mouth to speak.

"Bren," he said, taking a step towards her even as he deliberately kept his voice gentle and even as he attempted to reassure her and bring her comfort. "I know you do...but, it's fine. You know that right, that you can trust me?" He paused for the space of a heartbeat, pursing his lips thoughtfully before he added in an even more tender voice, "And you don't have to ask. I'll tell you. Freely. Gladly. I _did _miss you. I missed you so much," he said. "So very much that I can't even begin to tell you."

Slowly, she turned around to meet his gaze. "You did?" she asked, the tone of her voice more truthful and vulnerable with him than it had been with anyone else she'd ever spoken to before.

"Yes," he nodded, a slight smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Of course I did. I thought about you all the damn time. You were the last thing I thought about every night before I fell asleep. And then you were the first thing I thought of each morning when I woke up." He smiled sweetly, then added, "Every day, Bren."

Brennan arched an eyebrow as a sly grin slowly spread across her lips. "You thought of me as you awoke each morning to prepare for your day, hmmm?" she asked. For a split second, a spark of mischief rooted itself in her mind as she thought of the smile she'd just seen a hint of on his face even if it hadn't quite yet fully manifested. Wondering if she could finally draw it out, Brennan's bright eyes danced a bit as she asked in a completely serious tone of voice, "Or, perhaps, Booth, would it be more accurate to say that it wasn't just personal fondness that caused your mind to drift to thoughts of me, but maybe it was a more practical need?"

"Umm..." He swallowed heavily at her question, his voice cracking so briefly that anyone else _but _Brennan probably wouldn't have known him well enough or have been perceptive enough to notice it. "A more practical need, Bren?" he asked, his voice slightly choked. "Errmmm...I'm not sure what you mean..."

Never to be put off by his attempts to feign ignorance or maintain his denial, Brennan quirked a skeptical eyebrow as she tilted her head at him. "What I mean, Booth," she said, "is, well—would it be perhaps more accurate to say that the reason you thought of me each morning was because you maybe had an issue with your manhood that needed to be addressed?"

Booth's eyes widened at the directness of her words, and he swallowed as he felt a sudden flush warm his cheeks. He remembered feeling somewhat the same way in the very first days of his inquisition of her, when she described the processes of childbirth in anatomical detail.

"_Children—unless they are born by way of caesarian section, which is performed only when the life of the mother is believed to be unsalvageable, since the procedure inevitably kills her—pass through the birth canal, which is otherwise known as the vagina." _

She did so with relish, he recalled, because she was sure that such terminology would make him blush and squirm. While the tenor of their relationship had changed _substantially _since that time, and his own experiences regarding the female body and the male body's responses to it were far broader, more numerous, and substantially more well-informed than it had been in those early days, he nonetheless found himself somewhat unnerved by her frank talk as he was still unused to such plain speech.

_How is it that she can still do this to me? _he asked himself. _I've seen and touched and tasted every inch of her—and likewise she knows every part of me that way—so how on earth is she able to make me blush by speaking like this? _He kneaded the inside of his lip between his teeth for a moment as he puzzled over the question, unable to keep his mind from drifting from the words she had spoken to the mind-numbingly pleasurable things they had done together just six months earlier. A tiny growl of frustration sounded low in his throat as he tried to ignore the tingle that ran up his spine at the memory of the way her eyes twinkled back at him when he knelt down on her bed and stalked towards her on all fours. _She's doing this on purpose, _he told himself. _I don't know why, but she is—and as far as I can tell, she's enjoying it._

Unable to help herself as she saw the first visible signs that she was getting to him, Brennan said, "That is, if I'm going to be as accurate as I can be, it might be fair to say that you thought not just of _me_ when you awoke each morning and your manhood was in a certain natural condition as so often occurs to males at that particular time of day...but you missed my hands...and my mouth?"

Booth's already-pinkened cheeks and ears blushed a deep scarlet at her remark, and he shifted his weight from one hip to the other as he found himself unable to suppress a sheepish smile**. **

_Even after such a short period of time, she knows me better than anyone else ever has and that's because I've let her know all of me, _he reminded himself, _just as she gave all of herself to me_.

So while he was not sure how it was she could _still _have this effect on him, making him blush with a single turn of phrase, he felt no unease or discomfort even if he was still taken slightly off-guard at her words.

_Although I shouldn't be, _a voice echoed in his head. _I __should__ know better. If she can make me squirm, she's certainly __never__ going to pass up an opportunity to do __that_. _Saucy, impertinent wench._

The teasing lilt in her voice and the shimmer in her eye made him think of the way she looked in the moonlight, and as he watched her slender lips part with each word she spoke, her smirk became a faintly crooked grin. That wicked grin reminded him of all the wonderfully wicked things her hands and mouth had done to him in the few short weeks they were together the prior summer and how many hours he spent laying awake in his monk's bed in Rome thinking of those things, causing him to decide to answer in kind.

"Well," he shrugged, not just puzzled but, after a moment's reflection, a little amused that she could still catch him flat-footed with her teasing. Clearing his throat, he narrowed his eyes and said to her, "I _did _think of you each and every morning as the cock crowed." He paused, then gave her a little flash of his eyebrows as he watched to see if she caught his pun, before he added, "And, yes, as you say, I was thinking of every single part of you...your hands...your mouth...and your wonderful lips..."

She chuckled at his words, loving that she could make him blush even after all they'd shared. "Is that so?"

He caught her smile and took a step closer to her, remembering a line of ancient verse that he'd thought of frequently during their months apart.

"_Thy lips are like scarlet thread,_" he said, quoting Solomon's Song of Songs. "_And thy mouth is lovely. Thy temples are like halves of a pomegranate beneath thy veil."_

Brennan raised a brow, pleased that he could quote erotic passages of Scripture, passages that she was fairly certain that he would not have been able to recite from memory a mere seven months earlier.

"_Thy neck is like the tower of David built for an armory," _she replied with a smile, quoting the very next verse as she met his serve with a return volley of her own. _"Whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men."_

His brown eyes flickered with amusement and admiration.

"_Thy two breasts are like two twin young roes which feed among the lilies,_" he answered her, his eyes skimming over the curves of her bosom. He took yet another step towards her as raised his gaze again and reached for her, letting his fingertips brush quickly and lightly against the sleeve of her dress, pulling his hand away again as if he were afraid to let himself touch her too much.

"You have no damn idea how much I hated every morning waking up, wanting you, needing you, and not having you," he told her, his voice husky as he felt the shadow of his body's ache as a tightness low in the pit of his belly. He remembered the countless mornings he woke, his body uncomfortably sticky in the heat and humidity of the late Italian summer, and how he'd wished that he had a better excuse for waking up on sweat-creased sheets. "God, Bren, you have no idea at all."

"I think I have some idea," Brennan replied, letting her eyes survey his form once again, from his broad shoulders to his narrow waist and lower, noting how his trousers clung to the shape of his thighs, revealing his strength in a way that his priestly robes never did. "You're not the only one of us who yearned for the other while you were gone," she said. "Though the physiology differs, the want was most definitely the same."

Her admission sent a wistful flash swirling through Booth's belly as he thought of all the time that had passed during their separation—all the mornings each one of them woke up alone, aching for the other, and all the nights each one struggled to find sleep, knowing how easy it used to be to fall asleep in the arms of the other after finding satisfaction in making love by the light of a single flickering candle. He sighed quietly, glad that, after all of what each of them had endured, they were finally together again.

"I'm sorry I was gone so long," he said, his forehead creasing as he raised his eyebrows in a silent plea for forgiveness. "I wouldn't have been gone as long as I was if it could've been any other way. And...Bren, I'm so sorry that I couldn't send word to you before...before now."

He took a breath and nervously chewed the inside of his lip, trying to read the flicker in her pale blue eyes. He saw her mouth open, and her tongue briefly dart out to lick her slender lips, then vanish again as those lips curved into a small smile. Emboldened a little by her obvious teasing, he pursed his lips and gave her as stern a look as he could muster. "But believe me," he said, "I suffered in more than just the obvious ways."

Though he held his jaw rigid and tried to invest his words with seriousness as he bit back a snicker, he could not suppress the laughter in his eyes. Amused by the glint of mischief in her gaze, he finally gave up the ruse and a wide, toothy grin spread across his face.

Seeing that her gentle teasing had led him to smile the first true, wholly unburdened smile since their reunion, Brennan couldn't help but laugh again, and Booth felt a flush of warmth in his chest at hearing her laugh.

"Yes, well, whose fault was that now?" she asked him, the mischief that fired her words clear as her blue eyes shined at him. "I thought you said you were a fast rider, Booth..."

"I _am_," he said, his dark brown eyes narrowing as he gave her a skeptical look. "But it's not just a matter of speed, you know," he noted, his low voice edged with laughter. "I believe it was a very wise woman who once told me that sometimes one must be patient and persistent, making sure to take his time when it's important and counts." He flashed her a crooked grin and winked, remembering her saying those words to him the morning she gave herself to him, allowing him to realize a completeness and joy that he'd never felt before because of that single action. Seeing in her sly smile that she, too, remembered her remark, he murmured quietly as he blinked away the memory with a nod.

"Mmm, yes," he continued. "As I said, Mistress Brennan, I believe we both know that I have a _very _steep learning curve. And a skilled rider like myself knows one must always move with the horse, swinging his hips up and forward, sinking into the motion while the animal thrusts forward into a gallop. Because it's a truly wondrous thing when two move as one."

As the suggestive words fell from his mouth, he remembered the way the muscles of his thighs, calves and back stretched and ached for the first fortnight of his long journey home—unused as he was to spending all day in the saddle for weeks at a time after spending four months in the Dominican complex on the south banks of the Tiber, two miles from the walls of the Vatican— and how he hadn't felt that kind of stretching in his muscles since the first weeks he spent with her, when the faint twinge he felt in his lower back each morning offered a constant reminder of how wonderfully she had worn him out the night before.

During the months he spent in Rome, and every day he spent on the long road there and back again, he was acutely aware of how his body ached in a different way. However, aside from occasional moments of each day when he wasn't able to help himself from allowing his mind to drift to thoughts of her, Booth had tried hard to keep the amount of time he spent thinking of her compartmentalized to the beginning and ending of each day when he was alone in his bed.

Momentous events had demanded no less after he'd found out one afternoo that Cardinal Pole and Queen Mary had died on the same day in the third week of November within hours of one another. Chaos might have broken out in the wake of such a void of leadership in England, and Booth would have lapsed into a brooding period of reflection and intense prayer and reflection if he'd not already had an appointment to see the Holy Father to be dispensed of his vows just a few hours after hearing the news.

Booth remembered walking across the Pons Aemilius and making his way through the cobbled streets of Aventino back to the Basilica of Santa Sabina, reminding himself that while Pole was dead, the dream that the old man had of keeping England close to the bosom of the Mother Church was still very much alive. Booth had spent many an afternoon in the Vatican Library, occupying himself with the reading of treatises written in Latin and Byzantine Greek, but he frequently found his thoughts wandering, unable to keep from wondering how Pole expected to maintain the primacy of the Roman church in an England where reformist sentiments ran deep in certain quarters and where issues of an ecclesiastical nature had secular and pecuniary significance. Many noble and landed gentry families had acquired former Church properties and were loathe to part with them. Booth knew when he'd left England that Queen Mary was not long for this world, Pole having told him so, but Pole's passing was unexpected and had taken Booth completely by surprise.

After receiving the blessing of the Holy Father and being dispensed of his priestly vows, Booth was given layman's clothes, a horse, saddle, tack and bedroll, a heavy wool cloak and gloves to guard against the winter cold, and a coin-purse stuffed with clinking pieces of silver to sustain him on his way home. His journey began at the stables at Castel Sant'Angelo where he mounted the sorrel mare given to him, swinging his leg over the saddle and settling in, gently holding the reins in his hands as he glanced down at the strange sight of his trousered legs and booted feet in the stirrups. It had been less than twenty-four hours after the old Pope touched his shaky hand to Booth's head and had given the young man his blessing. The efficiency with which he'd been equipped to travel left little doubt in Booth's mind that all of the arrangements for his return journey had been arranged long before the Cardinal had drawn his last breath. It was clear that Pole had put a greater plan in place to keep God's church alive in England even after he and his cousin Mary were both dead, and Booth suspected that he was only one small part of that plan even if he didn't know exactly what the rest of it entailed. Glancing over his shoulder to take in one last glimpse of Rome before the city disappeared along the horizon behind him, Booth couldn't help but wonder what his place was in that plan and what the future held for him.

Drawing a breath as he brought his focus back to the present, Booth gave Brennan a soft, easy smile. "I left as soon as I was able," he told her, his eyes gleaming brightly as he spoke. "When I found out that my mission there was done, I gathered my things and left as soon as I could saddle up and go. I left as quickly as I could, not an hour after I was given a horse, because I couldn't bear the idea of spending one more night away from you than I had to."

She took a deep breath, studying his face as he made his admission to her. Heartened that he still trusted her so much as to allow her to see such a vulnerable look on his face, she reached up, and cupped his chin with her hand as she said, "While many people had anticipated Queen Mary's death for some time, I know that Cardinal Pole's death came as a surprise to us all. When you learned of his passing, it must've been very hard for you."

Booth felt a knot harden in his throat as he thought about his deceased mentor. He shrugged and sighed, remembering the odd swirl of emotions that had washed over him when another Dominican brother ran up to him and broke the news.

"I went to Italy when I was eighteen, not long after I was ordained a priest," he explained. "I was sent to the university in Padua, and met Cardinal Pole there. He took an interest in me and my studies, and though he was busy with many other things—he was an early favorite to be elected as Holy Father himself during the conclave ten years ago—he always made it a point to check on me, to invite me to his residence for an evening meal once or twice a month, looking after me with almost a paternal pride. He helped secure me a chair as a lecturer at the Sorbonne, and a few years later, when I came back to Rome, he asked me to work as his personal secretary..." Booth paused, falling silent for a moment as he thought about Pole and the usual swirl of feelings he felt when he thought of the man—largely a mixture of gratitude for all that Pole had done for him and guilt as he wondered if his mentor would have been disappointed to know that his protégé had broken his vows—choked his throat.

"He thought highly of you," Brennan said, seeing Booth as affected by the mention of Pole as he was, but in no way surprised at the response. "He took you under his wing, and gave you many opportunities that perhaps you would not have had otherwise because he recognized your talents and skills and overall worth." Booth nodded, and she added thoughtfully, "I suppose, then, you owed him a certain loyalty on that account."

"Yes," Booth said, his tone muted and a little wistful. He looked down at his hands, the skin dry and chapped by cold and wind, his hands roughened by calluses carved like grooves across his palms from a month spent gripping the reins of many a tired mount as he pushed the beasts to cross a continent's worth of mountain passes, icy river crossings and mile upon mile of rolling hills and snowy plains along the road back to Calais. Bringing his eyes back up to meet hers, he gave her a soft, almost pleading look.

"You know from the letter I left for you that I did not want to leave," he said. "Had it been anyone else but Cardinal Pole asking me to do what I did, I don't think I would have gone. I..." He sighed and shrugged. "I want you to know that—that I didn't _want _to leave you as I did, and that only I did it out of loyalty to the man who I owed so much, Bren, a man without whom I wouldn't be what I am today. You know that, right?"

Somewhat surprised by the raw passion she saw in him as he spoke, Brennan was unsure of what to say. Eventually, she asked simply, "Do you miss him?"

The question caught Booth staring off into the distance. He sighed and nodded. "In a way, he was more of a father to me than my own father was," he said. He fell silent again, pressing his lips together in a firm line as he thought about all that he had missed while he was gone. "I would've wanted to attend his funeral," he said soberly. "He was laid to rest in Canterbury Cathedral, in the Corona Chapel. At some point, perhaps in the spring when the roads are better for travel, I want to go to Kent, to pay my respects." He shrugged and said, "I think it's the least I should do...the least I owe him after everything that's happened."

After his admission, Brennan swallowed once before she felt that she needed to reciprocate to him in some way given the very personal admission he'd just made.

"I won't lie," she began tentatively. "I think I probably read your letter a thousand times or more in those first days. I was trying to figure out why you'd done it, and if it was as you said."

"As I'd said?" Booth asked, obviously confused by the vagueness of her words. "I'm not sure I understand what you mean, Bren."

She nodded at him and then clarified, "I mean...I tried to figure out if maybe there was some reason you might have for not telling me why you'd been sent away on such short notice. Either because you couldn't tell me in writing, in case somehow the letter went astray, or maybe there was a reason you couldn't trust me with the information?"

"Bren," he said, taking a step towards her and reaching for her hands. "It's as I told you in my letter—I was sent to Rome at the behest of Cardinal Pole, to deliver a message to the Holy Father on his behalf." His forehead creased as he looked at her, searching her face for a sign that she believed him. "It's as simple as that," he said. "I was but a humble messenger, Bren." He smiled sweetly, trying the coax the same from her.

_A mere messenger, _he thought to himself. _I know she knows that there's more going on here then simply that, but I can't reveal the details of what I did, or what I was asked to do...even to her. I swore before God I wouldn't, and on Pole's memory, I can't dishonor him by breaking __that__ vow. _He watched her slender, dark brows knit as she looked back at him, whether with skepticism or some kind of residual hurt, he wasn't sure. _Surely you know that, Bren_—_you're more than a mere midwife. You know that I cannot betray a confidence, the duty with which Pole charged me. You had your loyalty to your father and even went before the Inquisition because of it. Surely, I can do no less for the man who was as much my father as any I ever had on this earth. So, just as we did not let what happened around us get between us, so must we do so now. Whatever we are, whatever we will be to one another_—_let it be so, never mind the goings on of princes and popes. _He squeezed her hands and leaned in close, his forehead nearly touching hers as he stroked his thumbs over her knuckles._ Please, don't ask more, _he begged her silently. _ Please take me at my word, that I'll not have to tell you an untruth to protect you from things you know not of. Please...just let it go, Bren. Please?_

He let out another sigh before he continued, speaking in a quiet voice as he did so. "You know I trust you, Bren," he said, breathing in a noseful of her rosemary-scented hair. "Tell me that you trust me, too. Tell me you believe me when I say that I had no choice in this. I did not want to cause you any pain, I swear it. I would never want to hurt you, Bren."

Brennan swallowed once, and sighed as she nodded. "I know you trust me, Booth," she said. "I know that. And I know that you never meant to hurt me, Booth, I swear I do...it's just...well, I was in a very raw place when you left like that. And then I found out I was pregnant a few weeks later...and at that point I didn't have the luxury of doubting you. I _had_ to believe, Booth...I needed to have faith and believe in you because...because if I didn't think that you would be true to your word and come back to me...if I even let one single speck of doubt enter my mind...if as the days and weeks passed I began to doubt whether you'd told me the truth when you promised you'd return...that you'd come back to me...well, I wouldn't have been able to do what I had to do—for this child, for myself...or for you." She shook her head a little and swiveled her eyes away. "I had to believe it, even if it seemed irrational at the time."

"But Bren," he said, tilting his head as he tried to catch her gaze. "Hey..." He tugged on her hand, his voice low and reassuring as he spoke. "Listen, Bren—you knew I was going to come back to you. You knew that. I told you I would return. I gave you my word I would come back to you. And you believed me, because you know I would never lie to you." She raised her chin and brought her eyes back up to meet his as he encouraged her with a smile.

"Yes," she answered with a faint, almost imperceptible waver in her voice. "I did, Booth. I swear I did. It's just that...so much was changing in such a short period of time. Everything happened just so damn fast...and, well...I was alone." She saw his brown eyes widen and his smile fade into a slight frown. "Booth," she said, quickly trying to explain herself. "I don't blame you for that. I made my peace with it months ago. It's just...well, a statement of truth, of fact. That's how it was. And, though I was alone, I didn't doubt that you'd keep your promise and come back to me. But, I-I..." Her eyes again swung away from him, averted as she fumbled for words.

Booth's brow furrowed as he struggled to understand what troubled her, if she had—as she said—believed that he would back to her. He heard her hesitancy and wondered if he had caused her pain, despite his best efforts to reassure her that he was not leaving her because he didn't want to be with her—and that, while he wasn't sure how long he would be gone, he would return.

"What is it, Bren?" he asked, finally letting go of her hands as he reached up and gently placed his hands on the sides of her upper arms, not gripping them but rather slowly rubbing his palms up and down the sleeve of her dress. "Please? Tell me," he urged her, his voice low and raspy, hovering just above a whisper. "Trust and faith, right?" he said, echoing what he had said to her in the minutes before dawn on the morning he saw her last. "You know you can trust me...whatever it is, Bren...whatever it is...you can tell me."

Brennan slowly lifted her gaze to meet his, her eyes unexpectedly watering just a bit so that the normal blue of her irises seemed ever more brilliant than their usual color. At last, she spoke, her voice just louder then a hoarse whisper, as she told him, "In your letter, Booth, you never promised that when you got back that you'd still want me...especially a me that's, well..." She swallowed once, before she flushed a bit red in obvious embarrassment and gestured at her much changed body. "I didn't know...and to be truthful, I still don't know if you...well, after all that's happened since you've been gone, if you still...want me..."

Booth's eyes suddenly widened as he stared back at her with complete and utter surprise, shaking his head as her question rang in his ears. "What?" he gasped, amazed that she would even ask him such a question. He saw a hint of uncertainty in her face, her brows held high and her eyes narrowing ever so slightly as she awaited his answer with a trepidation. "Of course I still want you," he said quickly, taking a small step towards her. "I want you," he said again, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he could even take a breath. "More than anything, I want you."

He saw her press her lips together in a firm line as she tried to steel herself against the tide of emotions swelling inside of her, and seeing the doubt still written on her face, that doubt tugged at something deep inside of him.

"Oh, God, Bren," Booth told her with a disbelieving shake of his head. "How could you even think that I didn't want you?"

_How can she not see how much I want her? _he wondered. _How can she not know how much I've always wanted her, almost from the very first day I met her? That's the one thing that's always been a constant...my need for her, my want for her. It's always been there. __Always__. _He remembered how painfully his body had burned for her as he lay in his friar's cell at Westminster, and how he had come to her, so desperate for relief he felt no shame even as he took her hand and placed it where she could feel his arousal through the thin wool of his robes. Later that same morning, after they came together for the very first time—and, Booth noted with a faint grin, for the second time—he knew that, no matter what happened, he would never not want her. How many nights in the short time they had together did he come to her, giving her everything he had to give and drowning himself in the feeling of everything she gave to him? _God, Bren, _he thought. _How can you not see how much I want you—how you can unwind me, how you unravel me with a single look or glance? How can you not know? _

He thought back to the final morning he'd spent in her arms on the humble pallet that served as her bed in her cell at the priory before he left her to meet with Pole at Lambeth Palace, unaware in those minutes that it would be the last time that he'd see her for so many months.

_"I don't know a lot of things in this world, Bren," _he'd told her. _"But I do know what I want...I've known for a while now that I don't want this to be finished, Bren, this thing between us. I mean, damn, I don't even know what __it__ is, but if whatever it is means that by ending it, I can't keep you in my life, then I can't think of a moment when I'll ever want it to end. I don't want to give you up. Not now. Not ever. I want you. You know that, don't you? I want you, and I'll always want you." _

The uncertainty he saw in her face made his chest tighten and he wanted nothing more in that moment than to take away that uncertainty, to make sure she knew that he had never stopped wanting her.

"Bren," he said, his voice a little firmer than before. "I know you've got to know this, even if it may've slipped your mind while I was away. It seems as if both of us might've fallen into a few old bad habits that I guess are hard to break." He squeezed her arms gently, giving her a soft smile and a slight wink. "That's alright, though, because I've got absolutely no problem in telling it to you again and again and again, every day for the rest of our lives," he said. He raised his chin and waited a moment for her eyes to squarely meet his. "Bren, I want you. No matter what's happened, no matter what will happen, I want you. I want you with everything I am and everything I have. I want you. I've always wanted you. I will always want you."

As she listened to his words, Brennan's pulse quickened and her eyes widened in hopeful expectation as she listened to him speak. Tilting her head, she couldn't help herself as she asked in a very soft voice, "Do you really, Booth?"

"God, yes," he told her. "I swear to God, Bren, I do. I want you, and I want to be with you, Bren, however or wherever you'll have me." He paused for a beat before he added with a bit of a crooked grin, "Honest, Bren. The idea of being with you...of being with you again? And I don't just mean the sex—although you'd be able to rightly call me a liar if I said I didn't think of you and me and being together in _that _way every night and every morning and more often in between than you might believe. I mean _all _of it—everything that we share between us. And, well...you know, Bren...all of it? You and me and the thought of us having all of that? You've got to know...got to believe me when I tell you that it's what kept me sane this last half-year."

His heart pounding in his chest, he finally took a breath and closed his eyes for a moment, trying to ignore the voice of uncertainty that echoed in the back of his mind. Opening his eyes again, his gaze filled with the sight of her face with her pink, apple-shaped cheeks and delicately-arched eyebrows underneath which lay her eyes, their pale blue-green color giving her every glance a sense of discernment that had fascinated him from the very first moment his eyes met hers. He looked at her, his brown eyes narrowing slightly and then widening again as his glistening gaze bore into hers, lending a warmth to the heavy silence that hung between them.

"We can find a way to make this work between us," he finally said, his voice suddenly broader and stronger as he felt his chest swell with affection and hope. "If you still want me, Bren. Because, like I said, I swear to God...by the Holy Mother and all His Saints...I want you more than anything else in this world or the next. I swear."

Their eyes locked again, unblinking, for another very long moment before Brennan took a short breath and finally looked away, letting her eyes fall to his feet. Her gaze traced up the length of his tall, black riding boots which were dusty and scuffed from travel, over his knees to his thighs and up to the dark burgundy doublet which was dotted with tiny embroidered slits. Her eyes wandered up to his collar, and she could tell by the bobbing of his Adam's apple that he knew she was studying him. She saw his stubbled jaw shift slightly and the pink point of his tongue dart out from between his lips as she finally brought her eyes back up to meet his.

His mouth fell open, and he looked back at her, his warm brown eyes suddenly darker and hungrier as she gave him a small nod, her lips cracked with a crooked grin that was both an answer and an invitation. As soon as he saw the amused quiver of her lips, something inside of him broke, and he took a step towards her, closing the distance between them as he quietly spoke her name, cupping his large, calloused hands around her jaw and pulling her face to his as he kissed her.

"Bren," he murmured, pulling away for a fleeting second before leaning in again and letting his tongue skim along the cleft between her lips.

Brennan opened her mouth to him instantly and felt his tongue slide over her teeth and glance across her own. She closed her eyes and moaned as she kissed him back, reveling in the taste of his mouth—faintly spicy in a way that reminded her of mulled wine, with a hint of hazelnut and honey—and she felt a flash of heat ripple through her body as his hands fell from the sides of her face to grasp her hips. Feeling his strong, thick fingers squeeze her as he turned his head slightly and deepened the kiss, she felt the room begin to spin beneath her feet. Emboldened by the feel of his hands on her hips, she made a tiny growling sound in her throat and wrapped her arms around him, clawing a little at the back of his doublet. She kissed him hungrily, her mouth clutching at his as her tongue twirled in his mouth, and he couldn't help but jerk his hips against her as he suddenly felt himself losing control as he succombed to his desire for her, drowning in the taste of her kiss.

"Mmmm," he mumbled against her moist, honey-scented lips as he reluctantly pulled away, gasping for breath. "You taste...oh, my God...so good...better...even better than my dreams," he muttered, his words falling in broken, breathy groups as he sucked down brief mouthfuls of much-needed air.

His breath heaving as he leaned in to kiss her again, he saw the bright flicker in Brennan's eyes, which had darkened to a shimmering teal as he gave in again to want and licked his tongue as far into her mouth as he could reach. As they kissed, one of her hands slipped under the bottom of his doublet and he felt the warmth of her hand even through the fabric of his linen shirt. Feeling her touch on his skin after he'd endured a half-year with only the dreamy remembrance of how her hands had touched him in so many different ways during the short time they were together drove his want of her even higher, although he'd not thought such a thing was realistically possible. As he kissed her, his heart pounded in his chest and he found his hand drifting up to palm the round swell of her breast, swiping his thumb across the point of her nipple which he could feel hardening beneath the woolen dress and linen shift that kept him from feeling the groin-tightening delight of her silky skin. He squeezed her breast in his hand and she moaned, her mouth grasping once more at his before she grunted and pushed him away.

When they broke apart finally, each one gasping for breath, Brennan let her hands fall away from him as she took a small stumbling step backwards. She stood there, panting for breath as she saw the fire of arousal flickering in his pitch-dark eyes and the recognition of his need echoing in the way her body clenched emptily for want of him.

"You want me," she murmured, her hands shaking as she felt herself swaying a little on her feet, and she reached for his hands, partly to steady herself and partly that she could feel the warmth of his skin and the strength of his hands as she struggled for words, overcome as she was by feelings and sensations that seemed beyond the reach of words.

Booth's mouth hung open as he tried to breathe, his eyes narrowed as he heard her words as a faint murmur amid the roaring in his ears. "Yes," he said breathlessly. "I want you. I've always wanted you, Bren."

"Then prove it," Brennan replied. "Because I want you. I've wanted you every day..." She winced slightly as she felt a pulse of desire crackle through her limbs and she closed her slender fingers around the palms of his much larger hands. "I've wanted you every day since the day I last saw you. Wanted and wondered...if you still wanted me...so prove it. Prove you want me the way I want you."

Booth licked his kiss-swollen lips and looked down at the way her hands held his. "Bren," he said, his voice scarcely more than a low, ragged whisper.

"Come with me," she whispered, her eyes flashing bright with desire as she pulled him towards the stairs and towards the upper floor where her bedchamber sat located at the top of the stairway that was found in the back of the narrow house. "Now, right now, Booth."

Booth's eyebrows flew up then crinkled again as he hesitated, then smiled. "But Bren," he said, turning around towards the sitting room even as he felt himself yanked towards the stairs. "I thought you wanted to talk. You know, about..." His eyes swiveled to the round swell of her belly as his flushed cheeks seemed to blush even more. As he lifted his chin to meet her eyes again, he felt her lean in and her lips begin kissing a trail up the side of his neck. He arched his head back out of reflex and sighed, "Oh, God, that feels good," groaning a little as her light kisses became pecks. "But it just seems that we still..." The tiny pecks became more insistent as he felt her lips pluck at the tender skin just below where his beard began. "Bren...we have a lot to..." Her lips sucked at his skin, causing him to draw a sharp breath of pleasure and surprise as her mouth closed around the side of his Adam's apple. "Ohhh, God..." Smiling against his skin as she heard him blaspheme in pleasure, Brennan kissed his neck one more time before taking a half-step back to admire the way she had managed to scatter his focus. "You know...talk about...well..._us_."

"Well, yes," Brennan said with a twinkle in her blue eyes that made them gleam brighter than before, amused at having unwound him with just a few kisses. "But, as I said, there's no reason we can't talk and do this at the same time." She raised herself up on her toes and kissed the side of his mouth, letting her lips grasp at his ever so lightly, knowing that such feathery kisses would inflame him. Booth closed his eyes and answered her kisses with one of his own, unable to resist her even as he knew they had to talk.

"But," he said in half-hearted protest in between the playful, teasing kisses she gave him. "Bren, come on now. Be...serious. We can't...we've never...I can't talk and think...if you're doing that to me…if you're touching me and I'm touching you...if I can taste you and feel you and if all I can think about is how much I want to be inside of you..." He swallowed hard and shook his head, turning away from her kisses as he tried to shore up his will against the rising tide of his desire. "I want you, I swear I do...you know I do...but there's still so much we need to discuss...to talk about. Remember?"

"Mmmm," she responded as she tugged his hands and drew his downward glance, chuckling as she saw the opportunity to nibble at his earlobe. "Yes, of course, as ever, you're right, Booth."

He coughed as he felt her suck on his earlobe but did not turn or pull away, the pleasure of it making him feel his growing arousal in an even more pointed way then it had already been so strongly felt just a few moments earlier. "Then," he said. "We can't...do this...when we...need to talk, Bren...so you really...you can't do that to me, Bren."

Pulling her lips away from the tender flesh of his earlobe, the faint smile on her lips widened a little and turned into a crooked half-grin that betrayed her amusement at the effects her seductive mischief had wrought on him so quickly. "I already said you were right, Booth," she laughed. "But I don't see why we can't even try to talk and fuck. It sounds like fun, don't you think? We'll talk...and moan, and sigh—" She knew by the way his brown eyes had darkened to the color of two smoldering black coals that he wanted her, even as he protested her seductions. "You say you want to talk," she said with a laugh, brushing the back of her hand, tightly clasped as it was around his own, over the growing bulge in the front of his trousers, just below the bottom of his doublet. Pleased by the low growl that sounded in his throat at the contact, she did it again and said, "You say you want to talk, but that's not what your body's telling me. No, I think it's telling me something very, _very _different." His hip jerked against her hand as he grunted at her teasing touch. "Mmmm, _yeeeessss_," she hissed, her own eyes darkened and heavy-lidded as she thought of how he used to make her moan with a simple touch, laying a trail of wet, sucking kisses along the path from her navel to the sensitive skin on the inside of her thigh. The thought of feeling his tongue on her skin once more made her shiver in anticipation. "You can even growl back when you hear me gasp as I come. All of that will be more than quite satisfactory, don't you think, Booth?"

Booth felt a warm flash in his belly at feeling her tease his body with her touch as he heard the echo of her words sink into the increasingly cloudy layers of his mind, his desire resonating with the low, velvety tone in which she spoke. He opened his mouth to reply, but suddenly found himself inexplicably without words, a lopsided grin slowly spreading across his face as he felt her squeeze his hands once as if in warning and then pull him by the arm as she made her way towards the stairs.

She felt him stubbornly resist, then gave his arm another tug as he stumbled forward, catching himself and pulling her towards him as he reached the foot of the stairs. She stood on the first step and he pulled her into an embrace as he covered her mouth with his. They kissed for a few moments, at first gently and light, but quickly turning more heated as he freed one of his hands and snaked his arm around her waist. He pulled her snug against his chest as he climbed the first step, scarcely able to see as he felt consumed by the overarching desire to devour her. Letting his mouth draw one more kiss before she pulled her lips away, she chuckled a low laugh as she reached back and unlatched herself from his grasp.

"Come and get it," she snickered, sidestepping up two more steps as she dared him to follow her with a twinkle in her eyes.

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**A/N: **_So there you have it. We now know a little bit more about the struggles Booth and Brennan endured over the course of their six-month separation._

_Chapter 3 is actually the first half of what was originally written as a single chapter but, in true Dharmasera fashion, ended up ballooning into two chapters. _

_The good news is that Chapter 4 ("Rekindling, Part II") is written and more or less ready to go. Our plan is to post it in a few days, once folks have had a chance to get through Chapter 3. And yes, it is conceivable that Chapter 4 is where this story begins to earn its content rating. (So, yes, we ended the chapter at a sort of mean, cliffhangery place but you all know that you'll be soon rewarded for putting up with said cliffhanger, so we think you'll forgive us.)_

_In the meantime, we hope you found this chapter worth the wait. But don't leave us wondering. We've gone waaaay out in deep left field to bring you a totally different sort of Bones fanfic. So we need to know what you think. Please tell us how we did and leave a review. Drop us a line and we'll do what we can to get Chapter 4 up in the next few days._

_In any case, we're grateful for each and every one of you out there reading this. _

**Editorial Note on Literary Sources:** _For those who are curious, the Roman poem that Brennan quotes in this chapter is a portion of the poem "Flavius's Girl: to Flavius" by the poet Catullus. The other bit of erotic poetry we quoted comes from the Old Testament, from the "Song of Songs," Chapter 4, verses 3-5._


	5. Chapter 4: Rekindling, Part II

**The Return**

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**By:** dharmamonkey & Lesera128  
**Rated: **M  
**Disclaimer: **So, we're still here, and by now, we know as well as you do that we don't own anything. However, we are looking into ways to take control of this sandbox via adverse possession. ::blinks:: Okay, not really. But, you get the gist.

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**A/N:** _What can we say? Nothing you probably want to hear. We know, we know—you just want to skip ahead to the action. And on that note..._

**UNF Alert:** _Yes, it applies. If you don't want to read about adult subjects, or your mom and dad would be upset if they find out you did, stop reading now. For the rest of you, carry on._

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**Chapter 4: Rekindling, Part II**

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He quickly caught up with her again, grabbing a fistful of her skirt with his free hand as he felt her loosen her grasp on his other hand. "You said you wanted me, didn't you?" she asked him, climbing another step as she turned around.

"You know I did," he grunted back, climbing up behind her and leaning over her shoulder to press his lips to the side of her neck. "You know..." He didn't finish his sentence, instead busying his chapped lips with sucking at the soft ivory skin on the side of her shapely neck, just below her ear. He heard her sigh as he reached from behind and cupped her breast, grinning as she arched her head back with a moan. She allowed him to kiss her neck wetly for a few moments before she reached for the hand that was groping her chest and pulled him up, with little resistance this time, up the last few steps before finally reaching the landing at the top of the stairs. She didn't turn around as she heard his clomping footfalls behind her, but glanced over her shoulder with a wicked grin before pulling him by the arm into her room.

As soon as Booth had passed under the lintel and into her bedroom, she yanked the door shut, then pushed his back against the door and began unbuttoning his doublet. His mouth hung agape as he stood there, panting a little for breath as he watched her fingers work the tiny buttons, and he felt a raw tingling crackle at the base of his spine as the low, hard tugging sensation below his navel reminded him how long it had been since he'd felt the touch of her fingers against his bare skin.

"Bren," he whispered, mesmerized by feeling her touch as he leaned in and breathed in the musk of sweat and the scent of rosemary that clung to her hair. Although his body screamed to feel her and his heart yearned to take her into his arms and never, ever let her go, something murmured in the back of his mind as saw the swell of her belly and felt its firm shape pressing against his groin, and it was then, in that instant, when he suddenly faltered.

He looked down and saw the tiny wisps of auburn hair sticking to her sweat-dotted forehead as she worked the last of the buttons that held his doublet closed snug over the linen shirt he wore beneath it. Again, as she touched him, he felt the firm round of her child-swollen belly press against his groin, and he groaned as another thought entered his mind. _The child, _he thought. _That's my child swelling her body this way. Our child—a child we made together bedding as we did a half-year ago—a child that she'll soon be bring into this world and in so doing make me a father...and her a mother. _He saw her look up at him, a lusty gleam in her eye, but all he could think of was the tiny child curled up inside of her, helplessly dependent on her for protection, nourishment, and care, and he felt a wave of something strange wash over him, dampening the desire that had inundated him in the minutes since they first kissed. _How could I have forgotten? _he chastised himself. _How could I have forgotten that she's in this delicate state, being as she is with child? What kind of man am I that I let myself come as close as I did to taking her on the sitting room floor like some kind of trollop offering a paid tumble? For God's sake, she's pregnant. _A swirl of shame roiled in his gut as he looked at her standing before him, six or seven months to term with child—his child. _She deserves better than that from me, the man who fathered this child of hers._

"No," he muttered suddenly. "We can't, Bren. We just can't."

"Why not?" she asked, her voice scarcely a whisper as she helped him shrug out of the snug vest-like garment. "I want you, and I missed you," she said, leaning in to kiss him and uttering a soft growl of frustration as he broke off the kiss too soon for her liking. "And, since I already know you want me, I know I didn't misunderstand when you said that you missed me, did I, Booth? You say you missed me, and I think I've made it clear in no uncertain terms that I've missed you." Her eyes fell again to the front of his trousers and she lifted the bottom of his linen shirt to better see the size and shape of the bulge that betrayed how she had affected him. "I missed you..." She touched her fingertips to the soft skin of his belly, stroking the place right below his navel where a faint shadow of fine hair dove beneath the waistband of his trousers, smiling as she saw the muscles of his abdomen tighten at the contact. Turning her hand and letting the side of her thumb pass over the thick bulge between his legs, she stroked over the half-hard shape, pressing her thumb against the black fabric of his trousers and grinning as he hissed. "I'll admit I missed some parts of you more than others, though..."

Booth leaned his head back and swallowed hard, wincing as he felt the battle between desire and decency tearing at his self-control. Arching his back as he felt her tease his groin again, he reached down and batted her hand away.

"Please, Bren," he growled with a weary tone at the edge of his voice. "Please...stop it."

Brennan's lips parted in a wicked grin as she watched him tug at the waistband of his trousers, trying to adjust the lay of them to give himself more room. "Do you really want me to stop?" she asked. "Because I think you missed some parts of me very, very much...mmm?" She smirked as she saw the perspiration along his temples which made his close-cropped hair clump up in sweaty tufts. "Surely you agree it's high time to reacquaint yourself with some of those parts that you missed the most."

Booth sighed, holding his hand out in front of him as if to block her from reaching out and touching him again. "Yes, but—"

"But?" she laughed. "But what? You missed me, didn't you? And you say you still want me, didn't you? Aren't I right about that?"

"More than you possibly know," he replied, his face flushed as he felt conflicted, torn between his body's hunger to feel her again and the voice of sensibility that murmured in the back of his mind. "You know I want you," he said, the pitch of his voice edging higher as his frustrations mounted. "You know I desire you, Bren. You know that, but besides that I know that you're doing this—"

"Doing what?" Brennan said, attempting to play innocent as she looked back at him even as the twinkle in her blue eyes gave her away.

Booth shook his head, both surprised and not that she was playing dumb. Sighing in exasperation, he answered, "You _know_ what, Bren. And, I don't know why you're doing it...maybe you're doing it to torment me, and God knows I deserve it for leaving you the way I did, but, look...I-I..."

"I want you, Booth," she said, tugging at his shirt as she waited for him to lift up his arms so she could pull the white linen garment over his head. "Yes...I may be teasing you just a bit, but that's only because I want you, and it's as plain as day that you want me. So, please...enough. Let me take this off of you so I can feel you again. It's been too long, Booth..."

"Bren," Booth said, pushing her hands away gently as he shot her a look. "Come on, now. You know I missed you and that I want you and that...us, here, right now? What you want to do? Well, I know you want to..." He paused for a moment, his breath catching in his throat as he saw in her eyes a dark, determined smolder the likes of which he'd never seen before, and he felt his self-control wavering as the ache in his groin grew nearly painful. "You want...to fuck...I get that...and I want to...I _so_ want to...God knows, I want to, too." His words were raw and rattled in his throat as he spoke, not quite a growl but leaving little doubt that he wanted her even as he shook his head and tried to gently push her away. "But we can't. We can't." He pulled the hem of his shirt back over his belly and moved away from the door into the middle of the room.

"Why not?" she questioned him, suddenly confused. Hearing him utter the word 'fuck' which was a coarse word she'd heard from him on only a couple of other occasions during the entire time she'd known him—and even then only when they'd bedded, in the final moments before he broke—she was sure that he was as ready with want as she was. Her brows knit over her eyes and she stared at him, unable to understand how he could have been so passionate just minutes earlier and yet so insistent on pulling away now. "Why can't we, Booth? Why?"

"Because," he offered lamely, finding himself woefully lost for words as his belly churned with joy, shock, desire, fear and a half-dozen other emotions he was unsure he could have given a name to even if he could have teased them out from one another. Booth looked into her pale eyes, his brows raised and his forehead deeply creased as he silently begged her for understanding.

"But, I don't understand," she replied, a hint of vulnerability coming into her voice that twisted Booth's heart when he heard it causing her passionate sensuality to evaporate almost instantaneously. "If I want you, and you want me like you said, why can't we? Because...you do want me, Booth...don't you?"

"Of course I want you," he said, his voice reduced to a low rasp as he winced at the sudden, sharp tug he felt deep in his gut. He blinked a couple of times, trying to ignore the ache in his body as he struggled mightily to explain himself. "You _know_ that."

"Then," she pressed again. "Why can't we? Give me one good reason why we can't do this thing, right here, right now?"

"Because," he insisted stubbornly. A faint smile made Brennan's lips curve slightly as she saw in his irksome mulishness the sort of stout-hearted tenacity that she had found both infuriating and curiously attractive since the very first hours she spent in the interrogation room with him. "We just can't do it because—"

"Why?" she sighed, her own frustration continuing to grow with each second that passed as her immediate desires were thwarted by her reticence. "Why can't we? Tell me, Booth. Please. Give me one good reason why we shouldn't both be on that bed over there, naked but for our own sweat, speaking not a word of sense between us as we fill the room with the sound of our moaning and groaning, setting aside everything else in this world that doesn't have to do with getting you inside me in less than two minutes?"

"_Because_," he insisted, his mouth hanging open uselessly as his tongue lolled around for a few seconds while he fumbled for words. "Bren, I may not know much about these things, but even a spring colt like me knows that this is not how it's done. I just...well...surely you see that it's just not..." He searched her eyes for some kind of support as he stammered and struggled to explain himself. "Bren...I mean, everyone knows...you know...that it's just not..."

"What?" she prompted him. "How many times do I have to say this, Booth? I know you want me..." She jerked her chin in the direction of the half-hard bulge in his trousers. "You know it, too." Looking away for a moment, she turned back to him with a knowing smirk. "I tempted you to sin once," she said. "You burned for me then, and I know you burn for me now. I'm all too happy to tempt you to sin with me again, Booth. You said you want me..."

"It's not a matter of me wanting you," he protested, his brow deeply furrowed as he shook his head, wracking his brain for a way to make himself understood. Brennan, for her part, merely stared back at him blankly, offering no help. "It's _not_," he insisted. "It's just that..." His voice trailed off as he sighed and he tried again. "Look," he told her. "I was brought up to be a gentleman—before they sent me away to the monastery school, that is—and I know that it's just not right for a proper gentleman to...you know...ummm...considering how you're...well..." He vaguely gestured with his hand at her abdomen. "We can't. It wouldn't be...it's just not right..."

Brennan stared at him for a minute before comprehension suddenly dawned when she heard him refer to his childhood growing up the son of a knight on a Kentish estate where he would have been schooled on the proper way for a man to conduct himself around women. _Though you were molded by your church to be a friar and a priest, _she grumbled silently, _you're as we all are, at least at some level—a product of your upbringing—and you, Booth, are through and through a knight, hidden beneath a churchman's robes. You've spent too much time among men, and not enough time in the world to know better. It's no small wonder then that you adhere to such old-fashioned sensibilities about this, but I'll be __damned__ if I'm going to let that stand in the way of you not being with me like we both need and want to be after all this time. That's just __not__ happening. No way._

She rolled her eyes and breathed a sharp sigh of annoyance. "Oh, no—"

"What?" he asked. "Surely you know that it's just not right...that is...for us to give into our temptations when you're...it's just not right for me to..." Booth looked back at her, unnerved by the skeptical expression in her eyes. "What is it? You don't—"

She gave him a playful smile. "You're very sweet when you want to be, Booth, but don't be daft."

"Daft?" he asked. "It's not crazy to think...I mean, Bren, as a midwife, you of all people should know more about this sort of thing than anyone, but the fact is, everyone knows that it's not—"

"Booth," Brennan said. "It's fine. I promise. Now, come here." She reached for him again, and once more, Booth quickly moved out of her grasp.

"Bren, no," he insisted again with a shake of his head. "We can't do that."

"Why not?" she frowned at him. "If you want me, and I want you, then what's the problem?"

"Because," he tried to explain to her again. "The child—"

"Oh, Booth," Brennan reached for him again, grabbing a fistful of his linen shirt and pulling him towards her, lifting his shirt up again and brushing her knuckles across the warm, smooth skin of his belly again. She took his hand and held it in hers, drawing her thumb slowly across the web of veins and noting the rough, scaly feel of his hand, so different from the way it had felt before, then looked up and grinned at him, coaxing a faint smile from him with an easy shake of her head. "Come now. Enough with your teasing, hmmm? There'll be more than enough time for that later, but for now..." She then saw his eyes narrow and his smile faded as his lip curled upwards in confusion. "Oh, no," she said, realizing that he was absolutely serious in his reluctance and not just playing her. "No, Booth, please—there's no need for you to be silly like this."

"I'm not being silly," he said defensively, his voice edging higher as his cheeks flushed. "It's just that...I mean, everyone knows that it's not appropriate for—"

"Surely you don't..." Her voice trailed off into a fit of laughter. She shook her head as she followed him as he walked across the room towards the window overlooking the garden behind the shop. "You do realize that there's no harm to the child if you bedded me now? There's no harm in this, I swear."

"But...but..." He stammered, unable to form his chaotic thoughts into words as he looked at her strangely. "I can't take you this way."

"You don't want me this way then?" she asked. "Because despite your recent and frequent assertions to the contrary on that particular point, I don't think I can accept that as a valid point of contention on your part with you kissing me like you were just kissing me and touching me and responding to me like you were just a minute ago," she told him, the corners of her lips upturned into a vague smile.

"Of course I want you—" Booth began, but Brennan quickly cut him off with a shake of her head.

"Then, what?" she pressed him. "What is it? Who put such idiotic ideas in your head? Where did you get this information?"

Booth's lower jaw shifted forward and he looked away, his face flushing in embarrassment. "Umm, I just...it's...that is, it's customary that a man not lie with his wife when..." He saw her brow arch and a wide smile spread across her face as he fell silent again. He shook his head and sighed. "Well, a man once came to me, when I was hearing confession, and he confessed that he had asked his wife to—"

Brennan laughed and cut him off. "What precept, instruction, law or commandment was this man confessing to violating? Even the Hebrew Scriptures—the overwhelming majority of which commandments do not apply to Christians since the catechism set them aside when the Early Church fathers codified the canonical scripture—prohibit only a man and woman to engage in sex when she's menstruating. And..." She cocked her head to the side and shot him a pointed look. "Obviously, that's not an issue for me at present, now, is it? So what book of Scripture were you looking at that would discuss the subject of bedding during pregnancy?" She flashed her eyebrows and snickered. "Because I would been keenly interested in getting a copy, since the Vulgate and vernacular versions with which I'm familiar don't contain any discussions anywhere near that lurid or interesting."

Booth shot her a look that showed both his surprise and how much he was impressed by her. He then shook his head. "No, it's not that, Bren," he said, a slightly defensive edge creeping into his voice. "It's that...I have just heard...from parishioners, and from men I've overheard talking in taverns or at markets or wherever I've gone in my travels, and even from other friars talking about their brothers and brothers-in-law who have complained that they must sleep alone since their wives are with child. I mean, it's common knowledge that it's, well—"

"What—do you think it's bad?" she said, interrupting again even as she spoke slowly, choosing her words carefully as she looked into his concerned brown eyes. "Unhealthy...or sinful, possibly, if we were to do something like this simply because I'm with child?"

"Surely I will hurt the baby," he said solemnly. He was quiet for a moment, letting go of a soft sigh as the pinched look on his face relaxed a little and he felt some relief that she understood at last the nature of his concern. He scowled briefly at her needling before shrugging off her remark about sin. "Or I will hurt you. And I can't..._we _can't take such a risk, Bren. Not after everything we've already suffered through and lost this year. I just...we can't do it, Bren, we just _can't_."

"Booth," she said, sidling up behind him and, placing her hand over his, turning him around to face her. "Listen to me, alright?" She grasped his hand and moved it to rest on her swollen belly. "Do you feel that?"

Booth blinked and nodded slowly, his eyes meeting hers and then falling on the place where his hand lay, palming the round curve of her belly. "Yes," he said quietly, blinking a couple times as he realized in that moment that the dream-image which had clung to his memory for so many months was now a reality, warm and real beneath his travel-calloused fingers.

"That's our child," she said quietly. "He or she is enveloped inside of me, protected by bone, flesh, skin and amniotic fluid. Protected, alright? I've carried this child for seven months, and will carry him or her for another two months' time. Your son or daughter is safe. Do you understand?"

He rubbed his palm over her belly and slowly nodded. "Yes, Bren," he told her. "I do, but—"

"No, 'buts,'" Brennan said sharply as she shook her head at him. "That's all there is to it, Booth. Now, if you want me, then I see no reason why we shouldn't continue—"

"Bren," he said, reaching for her as he shook his head slightly. He felt her stiffen in his embrace as he pulled her to him and lightly touched his forehead to hers in a touch of such gentleness that Brennan was almost distracted enough away from her wants. "We can't," he said, his voice wistful and edged with a vague sadness. "The child's quickened long ago. Everything I've ever been told about women in such a state says that if we were married and this..." He rolled his jaw from one side to the other as he felt a wave of fear wash over him. Shrugging it away, he said, "Then we would've stopped sharing a bed long ago."

"Booth," Brennan sighed quietly. "What you've heard is wrong. The foolish tales you've heard are just that—I can assure you, with an expert's knowledge, I promise, they're utterly foolish nonsense with absolutely no basis in fact. Despite what so many people believe to be common knowledge, they're nothing more than old wives' tales."

Booth shook his head gently, taking a step back as his heavy, sloping brow furrowed low and hard over his eyes, making them seem even darker and more troubled than they'd appeared just moments before. Brennan sighed again as she decided to redouble her efforts, knowing that for more than one reason, it was crucial they not waste this opportunity to reestablish their personal intimacy.

"Listen to me, Booth," she said, her voice firmer and more demanding. One of his eyebrows went up at her sharp tone, causing her to soften it when she spoke once more. "Please?" she pleaded with him. "Although I know it's another relatively new thing in our relationship, this is one area where my knowledge and expertise outweighs your own. So, just as I trusted you when you knew more than I did when it came to matters of what your task was before when I was under arrest, you must trust me. This is my occupation. It's what I do. And, you already know, I'm very, _very _good at what I do."

"I know you are, Bren," he said quietly. "I know you are. But it's just that...it goes against everything I've ever been told or heard." He fell silent for a moment, then pursed his lips thoughtfully and shrugged. "I just don't want to cause you or our child any harm."

"Believe me, Booth," she attempted to reassure him. "I promise...I'm not giving you any different advice than I've given hundreds of other expectant fathers. I swear...so you have to trust me on this."

"It's not a question of me not trusting you," he said simply, his forehead crinkled as he looked at her with an almost boyish vulnerability. He nibbled the inside of his lip and cleared his throat, then looked down at his booted feet. _All the distance I traveled, _he told himself. _All that distance...and all that time that passed, and without so much of a shred of reassurance beyond the original lone letter I'd sent for her, still she kept faith with me. She believed in me, and she waited for me. After all that time, she still waited for me. I would trust her for that reason alone if nothing else. How can she even doubt that? _He took a deep breath and looked up to meet her questioning gaze. He nodded and said, "I _do _trust you, it's just that—"

"Then prove it," Brennan said, a certain hardness to her voice despite the smile on her lips. "Our child is in no danger. I'm in no danger. Just as I told you long ago, you can't hurt me. You _won't _hurt me, so..." She hesitated a moment, then remembered his words to her just minutes earlier. "Have some trust and faith in _me_ in this, Booth."

Still, he hesitated, even as he stroked his thumb over her bulging navel. "I'm just..." He shook his head as he struggled to form his roiling thoughts into words. "I know it's...I just...I-I...I'm still afraid I'll hurt you. And I can't do that Bren. I can't lose you. I don't know what I would ever do if I lost or hurt you or this child...our family. I'd die before I'd let anything happen to either one of you."

Brennan pushed his hand off her belly and reached up once again to touch his face, and he fell silent the moment her fingertips brushed along the edge of his jaw. "You won't," she promised him. She brushed her fingers over his rough, stubbled jaw and stroked her knuckles under his chin. "You won't lose me, you won't lose us, I promise you, Booth." She paused before she added, her voice soft, "You know, a wise man once told me that the only way that something like you and me would work is if we both have trust and faith."

"I know," he said with an awkward smile. "I _do _trust you, Bren, and I _do _have faith in you. But..." He shrugged and swallowed, shaking his head at the irony of finding himself, a skilled speaker, unable to find the words to explain himself. "I-I just...well...I don't know how to say it, Bren..." He looked down at her belly and winced slightly, then caught her gaze again. "But, we can't."

"Is it... that you don't find me...attractive this way?" she asked, her features slackened as she was suddenly unable to conceal the uncertainty in her voice as she gave voice to yet another important insecurity that had plagued her mind during the months of their separation. "Am I...am I-I...no longer beautiful to you, swollen as I am this way with the babe growing in me?" She glanced down at her belly, placing one hand on each side of the swollen shape as she brought her eyes up to meet his again, suddenly glistening with a vulnerability that she hadn't until that moment shown. "My body is rounder," she said, a glumness in her voice. "My face, my hands, my legs, my ankles have swollen as my body has as the child's grown. My breasts are larger and hang lower. The skin over my enlarged abdomen has been stretched and streaked as the child gets bigger." She stared down again at her hands as they fanned out over her belly, then looked back up into his eyes. "Tell me," she said, her voice wavering as she spoke. "Do I no longer inflame you...tempt you...as I once did, my body having changed so much since you saw me last?"

"What?" Booth's eyes widened, his jaw dropping open with shock and disbelief as he listened to the pain in her words. He shook his head, taking a step towards her, uncertain how to reassure her as he stared at her, holding his tongue between his lips as he watched her face. "No," he said. "No, by God, it's not that." A sheepish grin tugged at his lips as he quickly glanced out the window and then back at her, a smile finally spreading across his face. "To be honest, Bren, maybe it sounds crazy, but you're even more beautiful now than I remembered you." He laughed softly, glancing down at his dusty boots before bringing his eyes up to hers. "I stood out there today, in the street, for a while—maybe a quarter hour, maybe longer, I don't know—just watching you, Bren, before I walked into the shop."

"Really?" she asked, her eyes widening as her curiosity was piqued. "Honestly and truly?"

"Yeah," Booth grinned at her as he nodded in response. "And I couldn't believe my eyes, how beautiful you were. The way your skin is bright, and your hair so shiny, and...the smile you had on your face, I could see it from all the way across the street. And you're so..." His voice trailed off, and he scratched his head as he blinked away a darker memory. "So much healthier, and alive, you know, than you were when you were at the Dominican house. Because no matter what I did, what _we _did, and no matter how much I tried to improve things there for you, it didn't change the fact that you weren't free." He took a long breath, reaching his hand back to palm the round, soft swell of her belly. "Then I saw you step out from behind the counter, and I didn't know what to think. I thought you were someone else's, that someone else had gotten to you before I could get back from Rome. But even then, even in the minutes during which I was quite sure I'd lost you, you..." He pressed his lips into a firm line. "You were still the most beautiful thing I'd ever laid eyes upon." He paused, flashing his eyebrows and nodding at her. "You are."

Brennan blushed. "Some days I don't feel all that beautiful," she said wistfully before a smile cracked her face once more as she began to trust the truth of his words. "Some days I've felt so ugly...so many things besides feeling attractive in any way whatsoever." She thought back on the early months of her pregnancy and how morning sickness and shifting hormones had made her feel quite plain and ordinary. Shaking her head, she added almost more for herself then for Booth's benefit, "It's not been an easy thing to do, carrying your child."

Booth's brow crinkled, and his forehead creased deeply as he felt a wave of guilt crash over him. _I did this to her, _he thought. _It's because of me that she's suffered this way. _He tilted his head to one side and looked at her, his warm brown eyes soft and wide with sympathy. _It's all because of me. Damn. _ "I'm sorry," he whispered, stroking his fingers over her pregnant shape. "I know we didn't plan it to be this way. And I'd rather cut off my own arm then see you hurt or in any pain or suffering at all because of me."

"Of course," she said with a quiet, somewhat wistful sigh. "It's what you might expect—well, maybe not what _you _would expect, since you've probably not spent a great deal of time around pregnant women, but for anyone who has..." She shrugged. "My feet get tired, my back hurts, I tire easily a lot of the time. These things are all natural, and to be expected, but...even still—"

Booth blinked, looking down at her pregnant belly and imagining the child who grew inside of her. "I'm so sorry," he repeated. "I did this to you."

Brennan waved her hand dismissively. "It wasn't like you did it all by yourself," she said, a faint smile coming to her lips as she remembered all the nights he came to her, and how she tried to contain the sound of her gasps and peaking moans each time he sank into her. "And we both knew that..." She let her voice trail off. At the time that they first came together, she hadn't given much thought to the possibility of becoming pregnant—something she knew in retrospect was ludicrous, given her occupation—but she didn't at that point in time care. "Well, maybe we didn't even if I should've considered the possible ramifications of our actions," she said.

Booth winced and pouted his lips, then looked up at her, his brown eyes wide and open as his brow hovered over them with tentative expectation as he silently pleaded with her for some measure of forgiveness.

"Oh, come on, now," she gently chastised him with a small smile. "Don't do that."

"What?" Booth asked as he tilted his head with a quizzical look, the guilt he obviously felt still written all over his handsome face. "Do what?"

She blinked a couple of times and then said, "That look, Booth. The one you're giving me right now that says your favorite horse just died. It tears at my heart when you look at me like that especially when there's no need."

"What do you mean?" he asked, exaggerating the pouting of his lips to hide the faint smile he felt tickling at the edge of his jaw. "I mean, I'm just saying that I'm sorry I put you in this unhappy predicament, and for the—"

Brennan nodded at him. "Yes," she reassured him. "But, there's no need, Booth. Because...well, not to put too fine a point on it, even if I don't know how to say it without speaking plainly, I _am _happy, Booth. Happy that we have this child, and that you're finally home, and that we can be together."

"I am, too," he said quietly as he looked into her eyes, suddenly feeling more comfort and relief in her words than he'd felt since the moment he first saw her in the window of her father's shop that morning.

_Home, _he thought. _It's been ages since I ever thought of any place as that...as having had a home. Since being sent away from my father's estate to the monastery school, I've lived in many places, and slept on many beds, but I never, ever had a place I felt I could call 'home.' _ He felt suddenly buoyed by the thought that maybe he would be able to find a home with her—in her. _Home. Yes, I think I've finally come home. _The word filled his ears like music as he looked up at her with a bright smile.

"I'm happy, too, Bren," he said to her. "Happy that you're well, and that you still care for me, and that we have this child...and that I am finally someplace that I can call _home." _He held the phrase on the tip of his tongue, even after the words had passed his lips, as if still testing the sound of them. "Yes," he said. "I'm very happy. More than I think that I could ever possibly tell you."

For several long moments they just looked at one another as Booth tried to bring some semblance of order to the jumble of thoughts that were racing through his mind. He wondered what it had been like for her when, just weeks after he had left, she found herself pregnant. He had only faint memories of his own mother being with child—though neither of his younger siblings survived infancy—but he knew from what Brennan had told him and what he had heard from others that the first few months of pregnancy were hard on the mother, in some ways harder than the later ones.

"I'm sorry I wasn't here with you," he said. "That is, when you found out you were with child, and when you had the morning sickness? I wish that I had been here for you, to help you. To be with you. To be here for you, Bren. I remember from when I was a boy and my mother endured her confinements that they weren't the most pleasant of times. I'd have eased your trouble in any way if I could've done so."

"I know," she said quietly, trying not to let the residue of hurt she felt come through in her words. While she had made peace with the fact of his absence months before, it didn't change the way it made her feel—and the way the pregnancy itself seemed to amplify all of the feelings that came with their separation. "I would have liked you to have been here, too, but despite it all, I managed. It wasn't easy, I'll be honest with you, but I found a way to get through."

Booth nodded. "Still, though," he mumbled. "I'm so sorry you had to endure all that alone."

Brennan heard in his apology a tenderness, and saw in his wistful expression a gentleness, and as she looked at him she couldn't help but smile at how many different facets there were to this singular man. It amused her that he had been a nearly constant surprise to her from the very earliest minutes of their acquaintance: first in the interrogation room, commencing his inquest with a query about her favorite dessert, then when he showed a deep empathy for the suffering of Daisy Stires and her three dead sons, and later when he came to her in the still of night and laid himself bare for her, confessing his desire and begging for relief. But, Brennan noted with a smirk, it was his generosity, skill and passion as a lover that had surprised her above all. She felt a shiver roll down her spine as her body greedily reminded her that her aching need for release had still not been met.

"It's true—I would have rather have had you here, Booth," she said, her smile widening. "As I said, though—I managed."

She paused, her eyes sweeping the full length of his body, still unused to seeing him in layman's clothes that hugged the shape of his form more snugly than the loose drape of his clerical robes. The sight was evocative for her of the first time she'd seen him in a way she hadn't quite pictured before. She remembered him standing in front of her in his Dominican garb, an awkward, almost boyish look on his face as he asked her—standing as she did before him clad only in a fine sheen of sweat while her dress and shift lay on the floor behind her—whether he should take off his habit. _"Would you like to see me? I mean, without my robes?" _As the memory echoed in her mind, she felt her breath catch in her throat the way it did that morning as she recalled watching him reveal his body to her for the first time, and the way his mouth fell open in a long moan as he finally sank into her. The memory—the swirl of sensations and feelings comprising that single moment when the two of them, as disparate as night and day, became one—sent her reeling back into the present seeded with a nearly painful awareness of how long she'd been without him.

She knew in that moment that she was beyond the point of wanting when her body began to hum as if she even needed any further reminder of what she'd lacked or for how long. Her original decision reaffirmed, she pressed forward to attain what she wanted most in that moment.

"You know, Booth," she told him. "There is one thing, though," she continued. "One thing that I've struggled with more than anything as this pregnancy has progressed." She bit back a grin as she gave him a pointed look. "One thing which more than any other has proven to be the worst, most irksome and maddening part of being with child."

"What?" Booth asked, his brow wrinkled in puzzled concern. "Tell me. What is it?"

"The temptation," she said evenly, maintaining her firm, level stare as she watched his response.

"What?" he coughed, unsure if he'd heard her correctly. "What do you mean?"

"Well," she said. "Just as you said you've had physiological issues with your manhood..." She lifted her eyes, which he noticed had indeed darkened several noticeable shades from their normal color, and met his with a lascivious grin. "So have I had issues of my own."

Encouraged by the playful lilt in her voice, Booth decided he was willing to return her serve in the game of verbal tennis that the two had played so many times before. "Hmmm," he murmured teasingly. "What sort of issues, Mistress? I presume you haven't been plagued as I have, waking each morning with an ache as hard as oak." He stroked his stubbled chin in feigned thoughtfulness. "So, tell me...have you had lustfully strange dreams from which you awoke aroused? Troublesome visions of sinful temptations in the middle of your waking day? Voices chattering naughty whispers in the back of your mind? Perhaps you're afflicted with some kind of madness..." He waggled his brows and smirked. "Perhaps for once you've finally succumbed to the madness that you've driven the rest of us to..."

"Hmm," she murmured as she saw his brown eyes once more alight with mirth as if the banter itself soothed his anxiety. "It definitely _is _a kind of madness," she agreed. "Which, at times, has held me so in its sway that it was as if I were caught in some kind of waking nightmare from which only one thing could truly rouse me. One thing which, in your absence, I could not obtain relief from but for small, tiny, almost infinitesimal periods, really, which offered but brief relief."

Booth saw the bright flicker in her darkened eyes and he suspected he knew what she meant, but chose to play along as long as she was willing. Amid all that had changed between them, this, _this _had not changed, and he felt strangely comforted by that.

"Well," he said with a flash of his eyebrows. "It's a good thing I came back, then. To save you from your madness..."

Something in the teasing gleam in his eye and the charming cadence of his words fractured her will to maintain her end of the game.

"Damn straight," she muttered with a sharp nod of her head as she finally cracked. "I need to be bedded, Booth. Badly."

Though he had, at least in part, been expecting her to try again to lure him into her bed, the total bluntness of her admission stunned him. "Umm, what?" he blurted out. "You, ahh..."

"Perhaps it sounds terrible, but I won't lie. My sex drive has been...substantially increased as my pregnancy has progressed," she told him. "It seems no matter where I am, or what I'm doing, it's never far from my mind. At least, it's been that way since the morning sickness went away. It's perhaps awful to admit, but I could scarcely look at a man that resembled you in any way without thinking about it...about how much I wanted it."

Booth's brows knit low over his eyes as they swiveled from one side to the other. He imagined her making her rounds as a midwife, tending to customers at her father's apothecary shop, and buying food and necessities on market day, all the while aware that her body was crying out for satisfaction. When he was on the way home from Rome and spending his nights in tiny boarding house rooms in inns and taverns, particularly on the nights he spent in the French cities of Reims and Troyes, he'd occasionally found himself laying awake on a musty straw mattress, staring at the patterns the wobbly flicker of a candle's flame made on the ceiling of his room while he listened to the sound of grunting as his neighbor rutted with a prostitute in the next room over. Even then, inevitably reminded of how badly he ached for the company of the only woman he'd wished were sharing his bed, Booth had never been tempted to do more than he could for himself. He had asked her to wait for him, and so he would wait for her...and he had. Still, the thought that perhaps she'd done the same as him to get through the long and temptingly tortuous nights both intrigued and titillated him.

"What did you do, Bren?" he asked, suddenly aware of how warm he felt despite the slight chill in the room. "I mean, how did you...umm, you know...manage?"

She sighed as she shrugged her shoulders. "I handled it the best way as I was able to, Booth," she told him in response. She paused and then arched a playful eyebrow at him. "What? Are you asking for specific details?"

"Well, ummm..." Booth blushed, at first offering her little more than a shrug and a sheepish look. Seeing her eyes narrow, he scratched the back of his head, then looked down at his feet for a moment and mumbled, "Not, umm, specifically, but maybe, ahhhh...I mean, what did you do, in general?"

"Well," she nodded at him, managing to keep a straight face herself as she watched him blush. "I tried to put it out of my mind as much as I could. And sometimes that worked."

Unable to help himself, Booth rasped, "Just sometimes?"

Brennan nodded again. "Mmm-hmm," she answered. "Indeed."

"And..." Booth hesitated for a split second before he leaned in towards her and, encouraged by her apparent willingness to tell him such things, boldly asked, "What about the...other times?"

She laughed as she realized what he was asking her. "When I couldn't put it out of my mind," she began, "when it was too much...when I wanted nothing more badly than to be with you and to be touched by you..."

Unable to help himself, Booth stood up a little straighter, puffing his chest out a bit as a wide grin began to spread across his face.

For her part, Brennan didn't notice the smug look on his face as she tried to find the right words to explain herself. She stopped as she let her voice trail off, shifted her weight from one foot to the other, then she asked, "Do you remember the night you first came to me?"

He nodded, biting back a smile as he recalled once more the first time she touched him intimately. "Yes," he said quietly after he swallowed when he realized how dry his throat had suddenly become at her referencing _that _particular encounter out of all the ones she could've chosen to bring up in that moment. Hearing her speak of it gave the memory an immediacy he hadn't expected, considering that he had thought of that night dozens of times during the months he was gone. He listened to her speak, remembering the way her skin looked, illuminated only by the light of the slender taper he brought with him when he came into her cell.

"That night," she began. "You told me...you said, you felt like you'd been set on fire and that no matter what you did that you couldn't get any relief. You said that it felt like there was a fire that was burning you up from the inside out. Do you remember?" She let the question hang between them as she watched the memory flicker in his warm brown eyes. "Do you remember how desperate you felt that you thought I'd bewitched you?" she asked him.

"I-I...I know you cast no spell on me," he said simply. "I know that, Bren."

"Well, maybe I didn't...at least, not on purpose," she said. "But, if I did in some unconscious way, then you've had your vengeance on me. Because I think, in the time since we've been apart, it's _you _who's bewitched _me_."

"How?" he asked, the smugness he'd felt just moments before having faded as he realized that the longing she had felt was truly another order of magnitude worse than what he'd felt during that time. He wanted to know what she had gone through, and how she had felt for him during the time he'd been gone. "What do you mean?" he prompted her. "I don't understand."

"I've felt this way for _months_, Booth," she nodded at him. "And, I suppose I'm mostly teasing you about you having bewitched me since I know perfectly well that the reasons for the increase in my libido are physiological, a simple matter of nature. But, even still...it's been much to deal with...especially since the latter part of the third month, when the morning sickness went away." She laughed and placed her hand on top of his so that they both rest on her belly. "I've spent six months wanting you and never knowing if I'd ever have you again. And, now, here you are, right in front of me...obviously wanting me as well." She smiled and nodded her head in the direction of his groin, where his body's response had roused again in response to her describing the way she'd burned for him. "And, to be honest, Booth, I'm nearly out of my mind." She paused and looked up into his warm brown eyes. "Do you understand what I'm telling you now? Do I need to be more any more plain in my words?"

"No," Booth coughed, unable any longer to suppress a grin of his own despite the sympathy he felt for her plight. "But I do take your meaning."

"So," she said playfully, pulling his hand away from her belly. "Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to do something to help me in my hour of need? Lest I remind you that you, too, have needs which I must assume have not been properly tended to since the morning you and I last shared a bed, hmm? I can only assume you kept the edge off yourself—perhaps not all of the calluses on your hands are on account of hard travel."

"What do you think?" he asked with a smirk.

The playfulness in her expression faded as she scowled in response to his teasing. "Booth," she groused. "Will you not at least be as merciful to me as I was to you when I said I would cause no innocent pain?"

"Huh," he said as he arched an eyebrow at her. "You think you're an innocent, huh?" he asked her. "The way you were touching me, damn near pawing at me a few minutes ago, hardly seems the mark of an innocent, Bren. And you, walking about town, drawn tight as a huntsman's bow with want? Not sure that's so innocent, either." He chuckled, amused by his own humor, then fell silent when he saw the seriousness in Brennan's face as she narrowed her eyes at him but said nothing. "Alright," he smiled coyly. "You think there's some way I can help with that?" he asked, a crooked grin hanging off his lips as he felt his body tense in anticipation. He looked at her, his body humming at the sight of her but a quiet murmur in the back of his mind causing him to doubt himself. "I'm not sure I know what to do even if I tried," he said, a sudden weakness creeping into his voice.

"Nonsense," she said, pushing him against the wall next to the window and raising herself on her toes to kiss his mouth, her lips plucking at his as she breathed in a noseful of the smell of him, cinnamon and musk all swirled together. "You know _exactly _what to do," she muttered, her words falling as puffs of air that tickled his neck as she kissed and sucked at the smooth skin just below the line of stubble below his jaw. "You can't have forgotten," she whispered, pulling at his skin with her lips as she reached down and tugged at the bottom hem of his white linen shirt. "Not everything. And, whatever you have forgotten, I'm _more _then willing to help give you instruction in...so, are you going to let me take this off of you now or what?" she asked as she brushed his jaw with another kiss. "Or, are you going to be stubborn about this? Because I warn you—six months, Booth, I've wanted you and needed you and not had you. Six long damn months. But, now I do...so, enough waiting. I'm done waiting. It needs to be now. It needs to happen now. You and me, right here, right now."

Brennan fisted his shirt and looked up at him, her eyes burning and her nostrils flaring as she held her jaw tightly, her glare pointed and appraising as she searched his eyes for a sign, any hint at all, that he was not as ready as she was to end the abstinence that came with his absence. Booth's mouth hung open as if still stunned that her demanding lips had pulled away from his, but he did not flinch as he felt her work the linen garment up his chest, instead urging her on with a nod of his head.

"Do you understand me?" she asked. "Because I _really_ mean it. Right now. You need to be inside me..._right now_."

Booth groaned at her words, then leaned his head back and swallowed thickly as he felt the round ache low in his groin tug sharply in anticipation. He raised his arms up as she peeled the shirt over his head.

"I thought about you every day," he said, his voice gravelly as he leaned his head back against the wall. She tossed his shirt to the side and began running her hands over his chest. "God, Bren," he whispered, sucking in a breath as he felt her warm hands on his chest—her fingers skimming over his ribs and her thumbs swiping across his nipples as he hissed quietly at her touch—for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. "A day didn't pass that I didn't think about you...and about being with you again. I've missed you so much. So damn much. I nearly lost my mind with missing you."

"Then help me," she pleaded with him, reaching for his hands and bringing them to the lacing in the front of her dress. He hesitated briefly, then began to gently untie the laces, his fingers fumbling a bit as she continued to undress him, untying the drawstrings of his pants. "I may be pregnant, but I'm not made of glass," she said. "Touch me, Booth. Don't you remember what I taught you? Please don't tell me that you've forgotten already."

He studied her face as his fingers worked the laces, then averted his eyes and shook his head. "Bren," he said, biting the inside of his lip to suppress a smile as he tugged the laces loose with his somewhat clumsy fingers. Without warning, he suddenly stopped and brought his hands up to her face, cupping her jaw in his palms as he kissed her, covering her mouth with his as he chased her tongue with his. He rocked his hips against her as a matter of reflex, then felt a flush of heat in his belly as he broke off the kiss. "I-I...Bren, I don't know," he sighed. "I mean, maybe we shouldn't..."

"Damn it," Brennan growled. "What do I have to do to prove to you that there will be no harm in this?" She paused, tilted her head and then a devious glint came into her eye.

Without saying another word, she moved her hands back down to her bodice and swiftly pulled the remaining laces free, first of her overdress and then the white linen shift she wore under it. Although the finespun linen of her chemise still concealed the majority of her skin, she'd taken to wearing a size or two larger than normal since her breasts had increased in size as her pregnancy progressed. Reaching into the top of the chemise, she palmed her heavy breasts in each hand. She winced a bit as she let her thumbs tease her nipples into bright pink peaks, sharply drawing in breath as she played with herself.

"You see?" she said, swallowing once heavily as she squeezed her eyes shut. "I must have some relief, and I'll have it with you or not, although I'd much prefer it if you were the one to touch me like this, Booth," she told him in a breathy voice.

Booth gaped at her, open-mouthed, as he watched her caress her breasts. He felt his balls hitch as he thought about how many nights he'd spent laying awake trying to remember how it felt to hold those breasts in his hands, to drag his thumbs over those nipples, to squeeze them, to pinch them and suck them into his mouth as the room around them filled with the sound of her breathy moans. _It's been too long, _he told himself. _Too long since I've had those in my hands...in my mouth. _Yet still, he held back, determined to hold out a little longer, to see her push herself to the edge of her self-control. _Come on, now. That's it. Just a little more. _He felt a flash of raw want tingle at the base of his spine as his hands trembled and he rolled his thumbs against his forefingers in anticipation. Swallowing once, he only moved when she suddenly groaned.

"Bren—"

"I need to be touched," she moaned, closing her eyes as she continued to touch herself "If not by your hands then by my own. I..._ooohhh_...need it..._ahhhh_...now...right...now."

"You can't really be serious," he told her as he waited for her to open her eyes and look at him. "Bren—"

"Yes," she said, nodded furiously, not opening her eyes and missing the predatory glint that had come into his own eyes. "I can and I am...and I will."

"But," he muttered, his impatience growing and his tolerance for their game fraying. "Bren, come on, now—"

She again tweaked her nipples and again groaned. "_Ohhhh_," she moaned. "_Booo-tthhh._"

When she wisely groaned _his _name, the last thread of Booth's patience snapped, and he decided their playtime was over. His mind was racing with a torrent of thoughts, but he couldn't make sense of them enough to assemble them into an articulable thought. Shrugging away his mental haze, he took a step forward, leaning into her and pressing her against the wall as he angled his head to the side and kissed her. She responded with a sharp gasp as she responded to his kiss in kind, raking her nails across his belly as she heard him growl, then felt his hands grab her breasts and squeeze. When at last he broke off the kiss to take a breath, she turned her head to the side and laughed.

"Ohhh," she snickered, leering back at him with a lusty gleam in her eye. "So _now _you want me?"

"_Yessss_," he hissed, leaning in again and dropping hungry, sucking kisses across the edge of her jaw and along the curve of her neck down to her shoulder as he felt her hands move along the waistband of his trousers. "God, yes, I..."

He couldn't bring himself to finish his sentence, so scattered was his mind at that point. The only thing in that moment he knew is he wanted her, and there was no doubt in his mind―as her slender fingers slid between his trousers and the naked skin of his hips, swiftly working their way around to the front where he felt her hand close around his quickly hardening flesh―that she wanted him, too. And in that moment, as it seemed the entire world collapsed into a space only as big as the two of them, he didn't care about anything else.

"Booth," she whined, her breaths coming in pants as she tried to yank his trousers off his hips with one hand as she held his hard length in the other. "I want you. I _need _you." She swallowed, stroking him once before adding an emphatic, "_Now._"

"Take off the rest of your clothes," he told her with a grin as an impatience that hadn't really ever left flashed in her eyes once more. "And I'll take off mine."

Brennan's furrowed brow and frustrated pout gave way to a wicked grin as she released him and stepped back to toe off her shoes, sliding her dress off her shoulders and unthreading her arms from the sleeves before stepping out of it, leaning one arm against the wall to keep her top-heavy form from stumbling.

Booth had barely begun to pull his trousers off when he froze, transfixed by the sight of Brennan's pregnant body. For several moments he stood there, his trousers resting at mid-thigh as he watched her step out of her dress and pull her linen shift over her head. Her breasts were fuller, heavier, and hung a bit lower than they had the last time he had seen them, her ivory skin glowing in the moonlight that shone through the tall, narrow window of her cell. Her hips were a bit wider, their curves even softer, than they had been the last time he had cupped them with his hands, his fingertips pressing into her flesh as he entered her, again and again, the last night they had been together―the night before he had left for Italy, six months earlier. But more than anything, it was her belly, full and round with child―_his_ child―that captured his senses as he worshiped her with wide eyes.

"Booth," she said as she threw her shift to the side. "You're wearing far too much clothing."

He blinked out of his temporary haze and laughed. "I suppose you're right," he chuckled as he bent over and pulled off his riding boots one at a time, then quickly wiggled out of his trousers as he watched her climb onto the bed. Her movements, more awkward than they had been before, nonetheless left him entranced as he smiled at seeing her curvy, naked form take residence in the bed while he stood at the foot of it. "I missed you," he said again. "So much...so very much."

"Then show me," she said in a husky voice as she pulled back the covers and gently reclined against her pillow. Booth licked his lips and crawled into the bed and snuggled up against her as he lay on his side. "Prove it," she demanded as she turned her head to kiss him again. "Actions speak louder than words, Booth. Touch me...take me. Prove to me how much you want me. Prove it."

Booth murmured as he leaned over and kissed her, moaning into her mouth as he felt her tongue chase his. He cupped his hand over her shoulder, which felt slightly fuller and rounder than he had remembered it, and he found himself excited by that, for reasons he couldn't quite understand. He slid his hand over her shoulder and down her arm, letting his fingertips brush against the top of her breast as he grinned at her sighing response.

"You look so beautiful, Bren," he whispered to her, breaking off the kiss as his breaths fell in pants. "Your body, it's changed, true, but it's so much more magnificent than it was before." He smiled, then pressed his hand across to gently palm the plump roundness of her breast.

"Ohhhh," she sighed. "They're..." She leaned her head back as he closed his thumb and forefinger around the point of her nipple. "Ohh...they're more sensitive...mmmm...than they used to be, before I was with child." She sucked in a sharp breath as he pinched her. "Ohhh, Booth...that's too...no, no, no...ohh..." Brennan turned her head to look him in the eye. "Use your mouth," she said. "Like you were before...just go easy...it's..." Her voice trailed off as Booth bent his head and closed his lips around her nipple, kissing her softly, almost experimentally at first, before pulling away slightly.

"Is that alright?" he asked, raising his eyebrows expectantly before lowering his head once more.

"I'll tell you when it's too much," she whispered. "But touch me, please. Six months, Booth, remember? I need you to touch me. Make me feel...everything...but God, please...do it."

"Yes," he whispered back, his breath tickling the damp skin around her nipple. He pulled back slightly, then drew a circle around her darkened, rose-hued, pebbled flesh with the point of his tongue, murmuring unintelligibly as he broadened the scope of his explorations, dragging the flat of his tongue over the underside of her nipple as he stroked the soft swell above with his fingertips, which were dry and calloused from spending the preceding month out in the bitter cold holding the reins of a horse as he rode home, a thousand miles, all the way from Rome. "You're so soft, Bren," he said, shaking his head a little at how foolish his words sounded falling from his lips, but unable in that moment to say anything more meaningful, but yet also unable to contain his wonder and curiosity about the way she felt. "So soft, and so warm. You're everything that's womanly and just as I remember you in my mind's eye, except even..."

"Enough damn poetry, Booth," she gasped. "No more distractions. I need...you...to touch me. Now. Please. Touch me," she demanded. "I can't take it much longer, Booth. If you don't touch me the way I know you can, the way you took me that last night we were together, you're going to find out how desperate I really can be when I'm pushed to the edge of reason."

Booth pulled his mouth away from her breast and grinned wickedly. "I'm not sure, Bren, whether that's a promise or a threat," he said in low voice as he sat up a little and began to place a series of wet and increasingly insistent kisses along her collarbone. "But I think I it might be fun to find out, mmm?"

"Don't toy with me, Booth," she hissed, reaching up and grabbing his hand, pulling it over the round, prominent swell of her belly and down to the mass of damp, auburn curls between her legs. "Do you feel that?" she asked. "I need you. And I need you now." She moved her left hand from her thigh to his, then skimmed over the fine brown curls on his thigh until her fingers closed around his manhood, swollen and hard. She gripped him firmly and began to fist him, stroking him from base to tip, letting her thumb drag his skin loosely over his tip once or twice until she heard him hiss. "Do you want me?" she asked with laughter in her voice.

"Ohhhh...ohh, yeah," he groaned, burying his nose against her bosom as she teased him. "Always. You know that. Ohhh, fuck...Bren. Please..."

Pleased to hear him speak so coarsely in his arousal, she rewarded him for it, stroking him a couple of times before swiping her thumb over the tip once more and picking up a trace of the glistening fluid that had oozed from him in the moments since she had begun to fist him, then released him as she rolled over onto her side.

"From the behind, I think," she said as he pulled his thigh flush against the back of hers. "Like that one night, remember? Except that this time we're on our sides, so the bed itself can support this huge belly of mine. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Booth snaked his arm around her waist and brought his hand to rest over her navel. "You're not huge," he said. "You're wonderful."

Brennan groaned and bumped her rear against his groin, soliciting a grunt from him as his arousal brushed the cleft of her ass. "I'm huge, I'm nearly out of my mind with wanting and if you don't take me, right now, I'm quite certain I'm going to lose my mind." She moved her top leg slightly to grant him access. "Take me," she said. "Now. For the love of God, Booth. Take me now."

He looked down and saw her intimate flesh exposed to him, pink and glistening in the bright sunlight that shone through the window, and at the sight of it the last remnants of his reticence evaporated. Booth rolled back slightly, stroking his swollen flesh along the length of her folds, teasing her briefly before placing a kiss on the curve of her shoulder as he slowly but firmly pressed into her.

"Ohhhh," she moaned as she felt him open her up from the inside out. Whether due to the heightened sensitivity of her pregnant body due to increased blood flow to certain parts of her anatomy or because she had languished for so many months without intimate contact, the sensation of feeling his thick length slide into her seared her deeply as shockwaves of heat shuddered through her. "Oh, my God, Booth..."

"Mmmmm," he murmured back as he pressed as deeply as he could from that angle, moving slowly at first so that he did not hurt her even though the feel of her, so snug and wet as her body enveloped him and sucked him in, made him want to drive as far up and into her as was humanly possible as if in so doing he could crawl inside of her. "Magnificent," he whispered against her shoulder as he paused, enjoying for a moment being anchored inside of her after so many months apart. He slowly withdrew and it seemed that she tightened around him, as if her body itself was reluctant to let him go. "God, Bren," he hissed as he left just the swollen, sensitive tip of him seated inside of her. "You feel so damn good..."

"Ohhh," she sighed. "You needn't be so gentle, Booth. You can't penetrate me so deeply this way to cause me any harm or discomfort." She felt his lips press a soft kiss at the base of her neck. "Please move."

With a low, throaty grunt his only reply, Booth clasped one hand on her shoulder and palmed the side of her swollen belly with the other as he pressed into her, a bit harder and more deeply than before. He leaned into her thigh as he put his body weight behind his movements and stroked into her, again and again, until he felt himself drowning in the sensation of burying himself inside her again, wrapping his limbs around her again, pressing his sweaty skin against hers again, and, above all, the chest-swelling sound of her ever-louder sighs and moans filling the room around him once again.

"Oh, my God," she gasped, leaning her head back as her body arched against his, a long groan falling from her lips as she tightened around him and then hovered on the brink for a fleeting moment before shattering into a wave of tiny flutters. Hearing the sound of her voice peak at the moment of her release and feeling her body clench hard around him brought Booth to the rapidly-crumbling edge of his own self-control.

As he felt her release, he, too, broke, thrusting into her one last time and emptying himself into her as a series of spasms wracked his sweat-slicked body.

"Bren," he sighed as his last pulses faded and he opened his eyes to see her smiling face deeply flushed and glistening with a fine sheen of sweat. "I missed you so much," he whispered against her neck before kissing her earlobe. "So much...always you. You know that?"

"I missed you too, Booth," she murmured back with a husky laugh.

He raked his hand through his sweat-damp hair, sighing a little as he slipped out of her and rolled over onto his back. As she had so many times before when the bed they'd shared was smaller and less comfortable, she followed him, turning to snuggle against his side as she rested her head on his chest. He pulled her close with a happy if unintelligible murmur, then pressed a feather-light kiss against her forehead. After a few moments, she shifted and looked up at him, smiling as she brought her lips to his and kissed him. Her kiss was at first gentle, her soft, slender lips brushing against his chapped ones before their mouths opened to one another and she licked into his mouth, closing her eyes as she heard him moan into their kiss. She felt his tongue glance against hers as his mouth grasped at her lips, more lazy than hungry as he relished the taste of her for a few more seconds before he broke off the kiss with a contented "hmmm" and a smile.

Laying her head back against his chest, she chuckled quietly and stroked her fingers across his sweat-slicked skin as she felt the rise and fall of his breaths.

"Welcome home."

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**A/N:**_ Well, there you have it. B&B are really and truly back together, physically and emotionally, and sharing a bed again after spending six months apart. It's still not clear what they are to one another, other than lovers and expectant parents of a child who, unless something dramatic happens quickly, will be born out of wedlock. Booth came back to England expecting to support himself and perhaps share a home with Brennan. Now he has an instant family. Brennan has no easy road ahead of her—late in her pregnancy, soon to be a mother, her child sired by a man who used to be the London diocese's most prominent Inquisitor during the reign of the old Queen, called "Bloody Mary" by Protestants persecuted during her reign. Booth now must settle in his new life somehow and figure out a way to make a living, now that he's going to be a father of a child. Lots of stuff up in the air. But our Tudor B&B seem to have a strong bond...at least so far. (And did we mention they're having a baby, in case anyone missed that? Woohoo!)_

_So, what do you think so far? We know there was a long wait between these last two chapters and the one that preceded them, but hopefully the length and content of the two new chapters compensated for the long wait. But don't leave us guessing. We put a tremendous amount of time and effort into a story like this (even more than a normal one) with all the research that goes into making it accurate in all the historical details, even down to clothes, food, furniture, names of churches, neighborhoods and other places in London, Italy, France and so on—wherever our characters may roam. Putting a fic like this out there when it's so insanely different than all of the rest requires us to take a big chance as writers. We've shared our thoughts with you. Please—don't be shy and consider sharing your thoughts with us. Tell us you're out there and find value in the story we're telling. _

_Review or no review, we love you guys and thank you for reading..._

**Shameless plug for our other project:**_ For those who have been following our other wacky venture—the Angel/Bones crossover series that's been posting under Lesera128's profile—fear not! The ninth and last in the series (which began with the story "Toe to Toe") will be entitled "Hand to Hand" and will be set in the second half of Bones Season 4, ten weeks after the birth of Booth and Brennan's daughter. Is there anything better than papa Booth and Mama Brennan? Of course not. So stay tuned._


	6. Chapter 5: Conversing in the Afterglow

**The Return**

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**By:** dharmamonkey & Lesera128  
**Rated: **M  
**Disclaimer: **So, we're still here, and by now, we know as well as you do that we don't own anything. However, we are looking into ways to take control of this sandbox via adverse possession. ::blinks:: Okay, not really. But, you get the gist.

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**Chapter 5: Conversing in the Afterglow**

**A/N: **_Yes, yes—we know. This chapter is long, long overdue. We could offer you all a raft of really good excuses, but who really gives a toss as to what's happened between when we last posted a chapter and delivered this to you? What matters is, we're back, baby, and so is our favorite unmarried, mixed-faith, Tudor-era expectant couple. So, without further delay or further ado, here goes. Enjoy!_

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They lay next to each other in her bed, neither of them speaking for several long minutes, the room silent but for the sound of their shallow breathing.

For his part, Booth reclined on the bed with his hands propped behind his head and closed his eyes. He struggled to regain his breath and slow his still-pounding heart as he suddenly realized how dry his throat felt. As he slowly regained his bearings, he stretched out a bit, arching his back slightly against the feather down mattress of Brennan's bed. He couldn't help but smile at the luxurious feeling of the soft linens and feather down against his skin, never having enjoyed something quite so sumptuous. It was a stark comparison to the threadbare and worn wool blanket he'd used to cover himself in the months he'd been away from Brennan, especially all those winter nights he'd spent traveling the way from the Vatican in Rome over the Alps and through France to the Pas de Calais when many nights there were no more straw pallets available in the guest quarters at the local monastery. On such nights he considered himself lucky to have a warm spot on the floor in front of a fire with a roof over his head, given that the alternative was curling up under his blanket with only a thin bedroll to brace his back against the cold, hard, snow-dusted ground and his saddle as a pillow, hoping to fall asleep before the last embers of his campfire smoldered away into nothing.

Giving a silent prayer of thanks for the series of unimaginable events that had brought him to this time and place, he thought how everything had changed for him, not simply in the seven or so months since he'd first met Brennan during her inquisition, but in the hour or so since he'd been reunited with her.

_She's pregnant, _he thought. _She's pregnant. With a child. No, wait. Not just any child. That's my child she's carrying. The child that she and I created. The two of us, together... _He paused for a beat before another thought suddenly occurred to him. _That means that I'm going to be a father, _he told himself. _A father. To our child. That little baby that's growing in her will be born in just a couple of months' time, and he or she will look at me and know that I helped bring him or her into the world. He or she...they'll look to me to protect them and teach them and take care of them and help them find their way in the world with hopes that they will eventually find their own place in this world. I just hope it doesn't take them as long as it did their father to find that place. _He paused and then let a toothy grin cross his face. _Father. Me. They'll...they'll call __me__ 'Father.' _

He felt his heart begin to race, and his mind was suddenly flooded with a gush of images while a nervous wave of nausea swirled in his belly. Squeezing his eyes shut, he took a deep breath and tried to dismiss the voice that sputtered in the back of his mind. _It's alright. I can do this, _he told himself. _I can be that man. I can do what they both need me to do—Bren and our baby. Though, right now, I'm not quite sure how I can make that happen, but I have faith. Somehow, someway, I will. God's helped me before. I made it back to them with His help, so I know He will help me in this, too. _

He took another breath and closed his eyes as he swallowed heavily and then breathed a silent prayer.

_Saint Joseph, _he called out in silent supplication as he lay there. _Blessed husband of Mary and earthly father to our Lord, please help me. Please give me the wisdom and the strength to be the best father I must be for this innocent child and the wonderful woman next to me who made this child with me in the love that we made. Amen._

As the words of his prayer faded from his mind, he once again found himself listening to the sounds around him. He could hear a brisk wind gusting outside, rattling the window before dying down again, and he could hear the noise of street traffic: horses whinnying, oxcarts clacking their way down the street, and merchantmen calling out to prospective customers as they passed by. Though the noises outside the window reminded him that he was back in England, it was another sound—a softer, more rhythmic sound—that cemented in his mind the fact that he was _home. _

For a few moments, Booth just listened to the sound of her breathing, so grateful to be near enough to her to hear it after so spending so many months with only the memory of her. He heard her draw a breath and shift in bed next to him and turned his head to see her laying there, her hand resting on the round swell of her pregnant belly as she rested, her apparent calm belied somewhat by the blinking of her eyes and the occasional movement of her lips. His eyes followed the long line of Brennan's arm to her abdomen and felt his heart flutter at the thought that somewhere beneath that soft, faintly streaked skin, their growing child lay curled inside of her, silent and sleeping as it waited for the day it would join them in the world.

_Our child, _he thought once more as he watched her hand move, sliding from the top to the underside of her belly's round shape, a quiet murmur sounding from her throat that seemed to shake him from his quiet reverie. _I don't know how long it's going to take me to get used to that no matter how much I want to or try to...but I will, and I hope she knows that. But if she doesn't, I'll keep telling her until she believes me. Starting right now._

He swallowed thickly and breathed a quiet, ragged sigh, then rolled over to face her, placing a light kiss on her shoulder before raising his head to speak.

"Bren?" he whispered, his voice soft and a bit unsure as he uttered the single syllable of her name, the name he gave her the morning they came together for the very first time in the privacy of a sunlit, wood-paneled interrogation room at the Dominican house.

"Yes, Booth?" she said, rolling onto her side to face him, smiling as she soaked in the sight of him, finally within an arm's length after six long months.

Her heavy-lidded expression made her look younger and less guarded than he was used to seeing her. He knew that he was one of the very few people who'd ever seen her like this, and he wondered how many nights she'd come to this bed, alone and vulnerable, after she'd found out she was pregnant as she wondered if he'd ever keep his word to her or if she'd have to face the overwhelmingly daunting task of motherhood alone. The thought both sobered and scared him as he felt a new wave of guilt wash over him.

_It's not that I'm not thankful for this child that we've made, _he told himself. _But I can only imagine how difficult these last few months have been for her—if only because of the way people are about a woman who is with child but has no husband. _He thought about the rage that had flashed in her father's eyes when the apothecary had seen the way she'd touched him, and the way she'd spoke to him, and the suspicion in her brother's voice earlier, just moments after she'd placed his hand on her belly and had told him that she had things to tell him. _Though I imagine it's not been easy for her, she held her head high and remained unbowed by it all—just as she did during her arrest, imprisonment and inquisition. I know, more than just about anyone, I suppose, that she's a woman of incredible strength and will. If any woman could get through a time such as she has, it would be her. But even still..._

He hesitated for a moment, the question he had a desperate need to know the answer to catching in his throat as his mind raced with thought. He swallowed again, coughing a bit to clear the hard lump that seemed to have suddenly formed in his throat, then licked his lips and took a deep breath to steady himself before he asked the question that had been burning in his mind.

"Bren?" He repeated her name again, stalling for time before deciding that the only way to ask the question—since he knew he couldn't leave it unasked—was to do it quickly, the same way one would when struck with an arrow, yanking the shaft free as quickly as possible so that the wound could be bound up and allowed to heal. Just as with the arrow wound, Booth knew that dallying around before asking the question would, in the end, only cause more pain than not. "Why..." he began, his voice faltering a bit before he swallowed one last time and choked out the words. "Why did you decide to keep it?" he asked quietly, nibbling his lip as he waited for her answer.

Brennan stared back in stunned surprise as he finally managed to ask the question that she knew had clearly caused him some discomfiture given the sudden change in his body language. Booth's brows arched upwards as her continued silence unnerved him, carving deep creases in his forehead as his mouth fell open and his warm brown eyes slowly widened with growing unease. Finally, she tilted her head inquiringly and blinked several times as his question echoed in her mind, then asked, "What?"

Booth swallowed and looked away, afraid that if he met her gaze with his own, his resolve to ask the question would crumble.

"Well...you see...I mean," he stammered, averting his eyes as he rubbed his fingers distractedly over a crease in the wrinkled linen, his hand mere inches from the gentle curves of her bosom even as he focused his eyes on his fingertips and not on the silky swell of ivory flesh just a short reach away.

"You're a talented midwife. And your father is an accomplished, well-regarded apothecary. Surely you could have..." He hesitated as he felt a queasiness swirl in the pit of his stomach. "I know you could have caused yourself to lose this child, even though such an act is a mortal sin," he said, the words falling quickly from his tongue. "But you didn't." He finally ceased his fidgeting and brought his warm brown eyes to meet hers once more. "Knowing you as I do, I don't think it was because you've discovered a newfound respect for any religious dogma, be it the teachings of the Roman church or those of the reformers, so my question is...why didn't you do it?"

Brennan pursed her lips and thought about his question, not just in searching for the answer to it, but also to understand from where it came. She took several moments to turn over the question in her mind, not quite certain how to answer it, since such a course of action had never even entered her mind as a viable possibility. At last, she looked at him and tried to explain things as she verbalized the thoughts that came to her mind.

"Well," she began tentatively. "When I first missed my monthly bleeding, it was a strange thing."

A new set of lines appeared on Booth's forehead as he asked, "How so?"

She licked her lips for a moment and then answered, "I'm twenty-six years-old, Booth. I've had my courses every twenty-nine days, since I was twelve. Even when I was ill with fever, or in times of stress or sadness or pain, my monthly courses were so regular that I could know what day of the month it was based on how many days it'd been since I last bled. So, not long after I'd been home, I quickly realized that my courses were late, and I immediately suspected that something was amiss. Since I'm nowhere near old enough to have gone through the change of life, I knew that left only one other viable possibility given the..."

Her voice trailed off for a beat as she looked up at him. Her eyes lightening a shade as a smile cracked her otherwise serious face, as she finished her sentence.

"Well, given the extracurricular activities that you and I had spent some weeks engaging in, I knew the reason my courses were late likely was because I was with child." She paused again as she smiled softly, "When I realized what was going on, I know I perhaps should've been frightened, or perhaps uneasy, or maybe even angry. I mean, here I was, with no husband, carrying a child fathered by a man who I hadn't heard from in months, and wasn't sure when he would return. Or even _if_—"

Booth paled at her words, unable to help himself as he cut her off. "But, Bren," he interrupted, the plea for her to understand him—and the actions he'd had to take to safeguard their future—clear in his voice. "I promised you I would return," he said, his voice warm and insistent. "I _always_ intended to return. It was just a question of...well, I just didn't know when that would happen. But I swore I would come back to you..."

Feeling a need to assuage some of the guilt that she knew he still harbored over the actions that had resulted in their involuntary separation, Brennan reached over and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"I know that, Booth," she said, leaning over and kissing his cheek. "I promise you, I do. But, please understand me. I say these things not to hurt you, but just so that you can understand. At the time, I couldn't be sure you would come back—not because I thought you didn't _intend _to come back, but because...well, look at it from my perspective. You'd journeyed to the other end of the continent. A month's hard ride, over some of the most treacherous mountains in Europe, both because of the dangerous terrain and the perils of the road itself, during one of harshest of winters, no less. And I-I..." Her words trailed off as her voice cracked with emotion. "Many men would not have survived that journey. What if you had run out of supplies and starved or froze to death?"

Booth's brows twitched once and his face froze, and for several seconds he just stared back at her, his only movement being the blinking of his eyes. He recalled the way the bitterly cold wind had pricked at his cheeks as he rode through the mountains from Italy into the Swiss canton of Valais and how he bought a second wool cloak in the tiny hamlet of Orsières after emerging from the remote valley of Dranse d'Entremont so that he could wrap his feet in the wool blanket and cocoon himself in the two cloaks the next time he was caught out of doors at night. He took a breath and gave her a mute nod as she continued to speak.

"One simple mistake, Booth," she said grimly. "One simple accident that found you in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that would've been it. If your horse spooked and bolted, you could've fallen and broken your neck. You could've been accosted by bandits and had your throat slit after they'd relieved you of your meager belongings. You might've taken ill with an ague or fever and not received any proper medical care. There could've been any number of a hundred other countless ills that might've befallen you. I prayed for your safe return every morning and every night. I can't even tell you how many times I've prayed to the Holy Mother and St. Christopher for your safe return. But, even with all that, I still wasn't sure, Booth. God lets innocent lives leave this world every day. I couldn't be sure that He wouldn't be so cruel as to take you away from me, for good, at the time I'd just found out that I'd finally been given your child."

"I'm here, Bren," he said, reaching his arm around her shoulder and rolling into his back as he pulled her snug against his chest, which was still slightly sticky with sweat. "Alright? I know you worried—" He looked at her with a sympathetic pout on his lips for a moment as he let his sentence hang unfinished between them, but then kissed her forehead gently. "And I'm sorry about that—truly, I am, but it's alright, I think. All's well that ends well, hmm?"

He nodded at her to emphasize his point before he continued.

"None of those bad things befell me along the way," he told her. "Everything turned out alright for me. Seems the Lord sent one of His angels to ride on my shoulders along the way. The worst I have to show for that long journey is callouses on my hands from spending so many days holding a horse's reins, and I'm sure you'll have some salve down there in the shop to fix me right up." He chuckled, hoping to draw a smile out of her with a bit of levity, but felt her shrug against his chest and so pressed another soft kiss to her skin. "Bren," he said quietly, stroking his fingers over the wisps of soft, damp hair that clung to her temple. "I know you worried after me terribly, but I'm here now. I'm home."

He paused for a moment as he considered what he'd just said. He held his lips together as if holding the word in his mouth to savor it. He'd long ago come to think of 'home' as being wherever _she _was, and he'd told her as much in the letter he'd written to her the morning he left for Rome: _"Every morning that I awake between now and the day I next see your beautiful face again, I'll remind myself that I'm yet one day closer to the day when I'll be able to show you that I'm a man of my word and return home to you." _He nodded to himself, almost imperceptibly and then smiled.

"I'm home now," he said again, this time even more confidently, as much to reaffirm the statement to himself as to her.

For her part, Brennan seemed to take it as a natural statement that merited no question of any sort. "I know," she said with a quiet simplicity, rolling her cheek into his warm chest and taking a breath before continuing. "I know that _now._" She nodded her head as much as she was able to given her position. She then said, "But, back to your question, so I don't forget to give you an answer since I know sometimes we can get sidetracked in our discussions—"

"Hmm?" he murmured, unable to keep from grinning at the memory of all the conversations they'd started but never finished because their eyes would lock and, just seconds later, he'd find himself between her thighs or tucked snugly behind her as their bodies met with breathless abandon.

She chuckled a bit at his reaction before a more serious look returned to her face as she resumed speaking. "You wanted to know why is it that the thought never even entered my mind that I wouldn't do everything I could to see this pregnancy through to term?" She paused once more and then shrugged her shoulders a bit before she at last offered an answer. "Well," she told him. "It's quite simple. When I figured out that I was with child—pregnant with _your _child, Booth—there was never a question in my mind that I would carry this child to term and keep him or her, no matter what happened. No matter what anyone said about it."

Booth felt a swell of warmth in his chest to hear that she'd received the news of her pregnancy without fear or anger, and that she was happy at the prospect of being a mother and that she loved the child—_their_ child—already. He felt something else, an unexpected flash of pride, as her voice peaked with the strong-willed rebelliousness and strength of purpose that he'd seen that very first day in the interrogation room.

_That's my girl, _he grinned at her. _You've got bigger stones than any man I've ever met and, Heaven help me, I think I love you even more because of it. _

For her part, Brennan had fallen silent as she'd started to stroke her fingers over the part of Booth's chest that she knew as the _linea alba, _a fibrous structure separating the left and right _rectus abdominus_ that ran from the base of his sternum down past the navel to his groin. She'd longed to have the casual pleasure of relaxing while touching him like this, and now that she at long last had the chance, she decided to luxuriate in it. Although she hadn't seen many male chests up close and personal outside of her dead husband's and those of her male family members, she knew that Booth had an excellent physique. His _linea alba_ was quite well defined, despite the bookish nature of his clerical occupation, most likely because of his love of and skill in horsemanship.

The scientific term for the muscle echoed in her mind and made Brennan smile. She prided herself on her knowledge of anatomy, which knowledge she had gained not just through her work as a midwife but by studying texts on human anatomy. Among her proudest possessions was a copy of Andreas Vesalius's 1543 _De Humani Corporis Fabrica _("On the Fabric of the Human Body"), a thick, heavy volume containing detailed illustrations of the bones, muscles, organs and other structures of the body drawn from the dissected bodies of hanged convicts. It was with great relief that she returned home from her imprisonment to discover that her father had hidden the book to prevent it from being confiscated when the Inquisition searched their home.

After a few more moments of reflective quiet during which she distracted herself with silent admiration of her lover's body, her fingers stilled and, after allowing herself another few seconds of thought, she began to speak again.

"I think you know that even before our relationship," she began, "I had no desire to marry again. That choice was merely reaffirmed because of the time we'd spent together."

Booth's brow knit at her last remark, which surprised and puzzled him. _What did I do, or we do, that made her feel this way about the holy sacrament of marriage? _he wondered as a beat of silence held between them. He lay there, stunned and uncertain how to take the comment. _Does this mean that she wouldn't marry me someday? Or just that she'd given up on the idea of marrying and being a wife before me because she hadn't met the right person to change that very stubborn mind of hers? Or...is there something about __me__ that makes me unworthy to be her husband, or is it that she thinks that there is something about her that makes her unworthy of being a wife? _He paused as he frowned a bit and then shook his head in a minute way. _Surely it's not the latter, right? It couldn't be her, so... _His body tensed as a new thought suddenly occurred to him. _Oh, God—if it's not her, then it must be __me__. There's no other explanation. It has to be me... _

He closed his eyes and exhaled a long, steady breath as he tried to slow the gallop of his racing mind. _That isn't the point she's trying to make here, _another sharp voice in his head chastised him. _Stop, you fool. Stop thinking and just listen. _He gave a quick, almost imperceptible nod as he blinked away the thought and brought his focus back to her as she continued to speak.

"So, I knew that this might be my only chance to experience the joys of motherhood," she said, her thoughtful voice resonating against Booth's chest as she continued to lay there as she spoke. "And, even if I had no desire to be any man's wife ever again, I would be lying if I said I hadn't longed for quite some time to be a mother."

She paused, a small frown crossing her face as her voice softened even further than the gentle tone she'd been speaking in as they'd talked. "I think, if I have one regret from my marriage, it was the fact that I never conceived during the time that Timothy bedded me," she told him. A strange look crossed her face as she continued. "Not that it's very surprising to me. Timothy was very sweet. Very caring. Very loving. Or, at least as much as a boy of his age, since he wasn't quite seventeen, could be. But the few times we bedded were clumsy and infrequent, so I'm not really surprised that he never managed to get me with child."

Booth turned his head and smiled at her, taking a moment to simply soak up the sight of her, and the feel of her resting her head on his chest, before he took a breath and said, "I can hear in your words that you, even now, hold a certain fondness for your husband."

He paused for a beat and felt a swirl of sympathy in his belly as he imagined a soft smile on the doe-eyed face of a much-younger Brennan as she held out a cup of ale to a pink-cheeked youth the same way she had to offered one to him just a couple of hours earlier. Booth felt no jealousy as he thought about Brennan's long-dead husband, but rather was glad that she could look back and have at least some positive memories of the young man she'd given herself to—even if by necessity more than by choice—and then lost so shortly after she'd resigned herself to a choice and life that she hadn't really chosen for herself more than eleven years before.

He felt her draw a sudden breath, but he wasn't sure if it was because he'd said something wrong, so he quickly added, "He seems to have been a good man, young though he was when God took him from this earth." After a moment of hesitation, he guessed that he had not, in fact, upset her by his statement, and so, unable to resist any longer the tug of his own curiosity, he asked, "What was it like to be married—I mean, to be a wife and to have a husband?"

Brennan's head shifted against his chest as she twisted her body slightly to look up at him with a somewhat quizzical expression. She quirked her brows as her eyes met his warm, brown gaze and saw a softness and a genuineness in them that she had long ago realized she was helpless to resist.

"I was very young then," she explained. "Just barely fifteen when Timothy and I stood before the parish priest and said our vows." She chewed her bottom lip for a moment as she struggled to articulate her thoughts on something she hadn't thought on in some time, much less had ever verbalized to another living being. At last, she let out a sigh and then said, "I'm not sure I have an answer to your question, but...for what it's worth? I think...well, I understood then in a very elementary way what it meant to be a wife—that I was to honor and obey this man, who'd been a playmate and later a friend, and that I was expected to share his bed and to make a family with him—but, aside from that, I knew nothing of what it really meant to be married, and he fell ill just a few months after we were wed, so I never really had much of a chance to learn."

Booth pursed his lips for a moment, then rubbed his cupped hand over the smooth round of her shoulder as if to soothe her.

"Did you love him?" he asked quietly, his voice curious but tender and free of judgment.

The question took Brennan somewhat aback, and for several long seconds, her heart rate increased as she wondered how best to answer. At last, she offered a response that she knew wasn't really the type of answer she knew he wanted. "I don't know," she said with a shrug. "I just don't know. Love?" She paused, a strange look crossing her face as the alien word tumbled from her lips and caused her to shake her head. After a moment, she sighed and asked, "What does that even really mean?"

Booth listened to the vague echo of loss in her voice and felt an ache in his chest as he hugged her closer, pressing a kiss to the top of her head and letting his lips linger on her silky auburn hair.

"Love," Booth said, his voice quiet and reflective as he considered her question. "Hmmm. Love? Love means..." He called to mind the verse from the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians:_ "Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." _He stroked his fingers over her shoulder, wondering how a woman with a heart as open as Brennan's was to the suffering of others could not think she knew what love was. "Love means that we would sacrifice anything for those we love," he said. "Endure any burden, and pay any price."

He felt her draw a breath and hold it, and he expected her to say something, but she held back. He thought about her and the husband she lost so many years before. "You cared for him during his illness," he said, his words falling more as an observation than as a question.

"Yes," she quietly, her voice soft and suddenly very far away as she remembered pressing cold compresses to her young husband's forehead as she struggled to get him to sip the tonic she'd prepared from rosemary oil and yarrow extract. "Unlike many who fell ill with the sweating sickness, Timothy seemed to get better after a couple of days or so, though the fever, which I'd managed to break after giving him diaphoretic herbs, left him very weak. So we had some hope of him making a recovery. But less than a week later, just as he seemed to be getting better, he became ill again with a second attack. That second bout of fever, sweating, and the inevitable delirium came on quickly and drained what little strength he had left before I really could do much for him. He passed before dawn the next morning, not twenty hours after the onset of the second attack of fever. There wasn't much..." Her voice trailed off for a beat before she swallowed once, then shook her head and said, "Well, I did what I could for him."

"I'm sorry, Bren," Booth whispered, brushing his lips against her forehead before pressing a soft kiss there. As he listened to her, he was reminded of the stormy night that he'd been with her in her prison cell as she shuddered each time the tiny window of her cell lit up with lightning in the short seconds before the room filled with the rumble of thunder. He thought about how, when he'd asked her why she shivered that way, she'd confessed to him that her mother had died during such a storm. That night, he knew that she'd confessed to him something she'd never spoken of to another living soul and so, too, he knew from the sober gravity in her voice that this was the first time she'd ever opened up about her husband's passing. Booth felt a heaviness in his heart, not just at knowing that Brennan had lost her husband not even a year after mourning the death of her mother in childbirth, but also at hearing the faint raggedness on the edge of her voice and the emotional burden it hinted at. He felt the sad weariness in his chest grow stronger and his heart cracked a bit more as he heard the guilt latent in her speech.

Swallowing once, he thought carefully about how to respond. After a couple of moments, he told her, "You did what you could," his own voice just a shade above a whisper as he spoke. "You said yourself there was nothing more that could be done. You should not feel any guilt, Bren." He paused for a moment, rolling his lips together as he felt tiny wisps of her hair tickle his nose as he sighed quietly. "You were a good wife, and—until the very end, when God for His own reasons took him from you as He brought your husband to rest eternally in His bosom—you attended to him with a care and devotion and faith that let him know he was honored in this world." He paused for another instant as he hoped that, if and when the time came for him, that he would be cared for in the same manner. Booth tilted his head as he looked over at her and gave her a heartfelt smile. "You know, Bren," he told her. "What you did? For Timothy? In your own way, there's no greater love that you could've shown him."

Brennan thought about his words and, as she turned his claims around in her mind, she at last shrugged. "I suppose," she said. "There are many types of love...or so greater men and women then I have claimed throughout history. So, perhaps in my own way, you're right, and I did love him after a sort. But, even still, that having been said, I'm not certain, Booth." She paused and then tapped her fingertips lightly on his chest, as she told him, "I would still say though, that things between Timothy and I were very, _very_ different than how they are between you and I...in so very many different ways."

"I can see how that would be," he said, his words chosen carefully lest she think he was making light of what she'd had with her late husband. "You're not the same woman you were all those years ago. And the good Lord knows I am not the same man I was back then." He paused for a moment as he thought back to the days he spent in Padua. "I was in Italy then," he said, not really sure why he felt he had to tell her that except that a part of him wished, in retrospect, that somehow—as silly as the thought of it seemed—he could have been there to be a help and a comfort to her when she suffered the loss of her husband. He nuzzled her hair as he held her snug against him, wondering what it would've been like to know her back then.

"It seems strange to think of it now," he mused thoughtfully. "How young we were those years ago," he told her. "You a young wife, newly wed to her husband, and me a priest, two years into my studies in Padua. It's strange to think of it now, and how things have changed for both of us..." His voice trailed off with a sigh, and he felt himself relax again into the feeling of holding her in his arms as the significance of those changes washed over him.

"Yes, well..." She wondered what he would have looked like then, imagining him as a gangly young man, the blemishes of his youthful complexion having barely faded into faint pockmarks as he filled in, putting on weight as he grew into his long limbs and finally began to look as though his big hands and feet actually belonged to him. She gave him a sly smile and shrugged away the image of a lanky twenty year-old Booth, urging him to loosen his grasp on her shoulder to allow her to shift her position and ease the pressure on her aching back.

"Nevertheless," she said, settling into a more comfortable spot as she nestled her head in the crook where his arm and shoulder met. "I was ecstatic to find out that I was finally going to be a mother, in no small part because I felt...well, to be honest, I felt a little less like a failure than I had since Timothy's death."

"A failure?" he coughed, his heavy brow furrowed with surprise and confusion. "What do you mean?" He paused as he gave her a questioning look before sympathy overrode his confusion with a shake of his head. "You've never failed at a single thing you've ever tried to do in life, I think, so how could you ever think that, Bren?"

"Well," she started to explain. "Before you managed to get me with child, I was somewhat concerned that the reason I'd never conceived was because of some problem, some fault of my own."

"But Bren," he said, his cheeks flushing a bit with a flash of pride when he heard her make reference to his virility. "Such things work in mysterious ways. I know you don't necessarily believe in such things as I do, but even though we may not know God's plan, He does have one. And so far as children are concerned, you of all people know that sometimes these things can take some time to pass, through no fault of either husband or wife..."

"Even still," she nodded. "I couldn't help but think it was because of some deficiency on my part. But, once I found out that I was with child, and that it wasn't my fault that I never became pregnant during my marriage, well..." Her voice trailed off as she smiled a bit. "I was so relieved. For more than one reason, as you can now see. So, it didn't matter what I'd have to do, what strictures I'd have to face to carry this child to term and be its mother. Whatever I had to do, I was going to do it, and that was that."

Booth pondered that for a moment, and then finally said something that had been on the tip of his tongue for some time. "It must've been very hard," he said. "Facing all that by yourself? Even if you knew the end result was worth whatever trials you had to face for the sake of our child, it couldn't have been an easy thing to do."

Brennan made a face as she considered his words and shrugged. "You know me, Booth," she said. "Besides the very few people whom I truly know and trust and care about so very deeply—you, my father, and my brother? Well, I don't really give a damn about what anyone else has ever said about me. It's none of their damn business anyway. Once they saw that I was with child, well, they either accepted it or not. And, if anyone couldn't, then to hell with them. They could find another midwife to hire even if they would have difficulty finding someone as skilled and as good at what I do as I am. But—" She paused for a beat as a smile returned to her face. "Honestly? In my social circles? Even if people may've wondered and had questions about it, no one ever said a word...besides my brother and father, that is."

It had turned out, as Brennan had explained to Booth, that no one said much to her about her pregnancy even, sometime in the fourth month of her pregnancy, when she began to show, though she knew people had questions. It was at that time that Brennan had begun to notice that regular patrons of her father's apothecary shop—those who knew her family and knew that she was not married—would look at her oddly. As they approached the counter, they would glance at her, then up at the shelves of jars behind her, then a strange, shifty look would come into their eyes and they would do a double-take, their gaze lingering for several seconds on the slight but unmistakable swell of her abdomen before they tore their eyes away and, after an awkward swallow or stutter, proceeded to do whatever business they came into the shop to transact.

Some—but by no means all—of Brennan's midwifery clients were somewhat less judgmental in the manner in which they seemed to regard her, but nonetheless a distinct tension hung over many of her consultations.

None of her casual acquaintances or clients dared ask her who the father of the child was, and as the months wore on, people seemed to become accustomed to her pregnancy, even as the vague shiftiness in their gazes and the awkward waver in their voices as they spoke testified silently to the taboo she flaunted by acting as if there were nothing unusual about an unmarried woman being happily and unashamedly pregnant.

True, her family had been a different matter, but she liked to think she had handled her father and Russ well enough, at least until such a time as the matter would have to be revisited. The thought suddenly occurred to her that, like it or not, that time was now, since Booth's arrival had obviously stirred up old arguments as her fiery exchange with Matthew Brennan—after his heated conversation with the ex-priest had degenerated into fisticuffs—had shown. Knowing the pair of them would eventually have to deal with her father once and for all, Brennan let out a breath and pushed the matter aside for the present time. Instead, she decided to focus on the more important and more enjoyable topics at hand—Booth and their baby.

"This precious child is a gift," she said, her voice soft and yet unbowed as she spoke "One that I've been grateful for every day since I found out I was pregnant. So the simple answer to your question? Why did I keep the baby? It's because I wanted it. Perhaps more than I've ever wanted anything before or since in my life. So, there was never even a question of if I would keep it. This baby, from the very moment it was conceived, has been wanted and loved. Do you understand what I mean?"

Booth nodded. "Yes," he whispered. "I'm glad you...you kept our baby...our child." He smiled at the sound of the words. "My child," he added, stroking his fingers over her hair as he kissed her forehead once more. He felt his skin flush and his chest swell with warmth as the words _our child _continue to echo in the corridors of his mind.

"You know," Brennan said quietly, rolling her lips into a firm line as she took a breath, hesitating as her swirling thoughts coalesced into words in her mind. "Even after all that, there was _another _reason I would've kept the baby, even if all the others hadn't existed."

"Oh?" Booth raised his brows, drawing deep creases in his forehead as he turned to gaze into her sparkling blue eyes and found himself utterly unable to resist cracking a smile. "And what reason is that, Bren?" he asked, bringing his hand down to palm her round belly with his big, veiny, thick-fingered hand. He felt the warmth of her skin against his fingers and the smile suddenly faded from his face as he looked at her with a reticent expectation, his voice dropping a half-octave as he urged her to continue. "Tell me."

Brennan looked into his warm brown eyes for a moment and then, unable to help herself, she turned her head away as she broke eye contact with him. She was quiet for another minute before she felt his hand cup her jaw and gently tilt her face back so that their eyes once again locked. Nodding slightly, she continued.

"I thought that, you know, even if by God's grace you made it back to England, that you might not be free to be with me, to be a father to this child, to be to me as a man should be to the woman who has born him children," she said, a certain sadness in her voice. "And I thought, if I couldn't have you, Booth—I mean, to have _all _of you—then maybe, by having this child, I would be able to have part of you that I could keep with me, always." She turned her head and looked up at him. "I know that surely sounds daft, but..." She sighed. "That's the way I felt, Booth. And so..." She brought her hand over the swell of her belly and placed it on his. "That's why I knew, even in the first days after I knew I was pregnant with your child, that I would keep this baby."

Booth nodded, all of the nervous hesitation and gravity that had hung on his face seemed to melt away as his lips curved once more into a sweet, happy smile. "I'm glad," he said, his words liquid with emotion. He lay there still and silent, his hand resting on her belly and his lips brushing softly against her temple as he blinked a few times and thought about how she must have felt when she discovered she was pregnant with his child, just weeks after he'd left for Rome. "You needn't have such worries now," he told her. "You know? About me being able to be a father to our child, or being able to give to you what we wished that I could when we were together last." He pressed his lips together in a firm line as he thought about the news he had been anticipating for weeks being able to deliver to her but which had, until that very moment, completely escaped his mind as he found himself swallowed up in the life-changing news she'd broken to him. He took a deep breath, then cocked his head to one side, murmured quietly to himself and shrugged a little as if in self-encouragement.

"You know that I'm no longer a priest," he said simply. "Or, at least I hope you do. Or if you didn't before this very moment, well—now you do."

Brennan was quiet for a long moment that was heavy with a tense silence that was almost as pregnant as she was, then finally nodded. "I would be lying if I said it wasn't something that I had wondered about since the moment I saw you in the shop, because you have given up your habit—your friar's robes, that is—and taken to wearing ordinary garb. I wasn't sure, though, because I thought perhaps you had taken off your habit for the sake of travel." For several moments, she was silent once more, running the possible scenarios in her mind that could've brought him to make such a claim, before she spoke again. At last, she looked back to him and tilted her head as she asked, "I don't know how such a thing could be true, but...can it be? Is it really true, Booth? Are you—that is, are you...are you really free?"

The sound of cautious hope in Brennan's husky voice sent Booth's dark, heavy brows arching over his widened eyes as a faint grin tugged at the corners of his mouth.

"I was granted a dispensation from my vows by the Holy Father himself," he told her, his low voice even and sober yet threaded with relief as he revealed to her that the Church, which had caused her and her family considerable suffering during the last queen's reign, had offered at last an answer to the problem that confounded them just before he left for Rome. "I'm no longer bound by the vows that..." He smiled and grunted out a somewhat awkward laugh that belied the gravity he felt at sharing the news with her. "Well, the very ones I repeatedly and knowingly violated when I engaged in those..." He paused for a beat before he used the same words she had used just a few moments earlier to describe their bedsport. "In those 'extracurricular activities' that resulted in me fathering our child."

Brennan smiled against the warm skin of his well-toned chest as she listened to his words. "I know that," she said. "I know, Booth." She paused for a beat and then gave him a bit of a lopsided grin as clarified. "So, in what we've just done, we didn't violate any vows." Booth shot her a serious look and she quickly amended, "It's true we've sinned, perhaps, but violated no sacred vows." She stroked her thumb over his as he hugged her closer to his chest. "Isn't that so?"

"Yes," he conceded, his voice suddenly hushed as he focused his attention on the way her thumb stroked over the knuckle of his. He smiled at the tenderness of the gesture and a soft murmur sounded low in his throat before he fell completely silent.

He lay there quietly for a minute as he pondered the enormity of all the changes that had befallen him (and them) in just a matter of a few short months. While he could intellectually grasp the changes, he felt decidedly unmoored, adrift in a sea of circumstances that he hadn't the sketchiest idea how to navigate. He felt unprepared for fatherhood, having never really considered the possibility (aside from a few strange dreams he'd had during the woozy days he spent in a bloodletting-induced stupor in the Dominican infirmary, which dreams had visited him a few times since), but he took a comfort in the fact that Brennan seemed unafraid of the future they faced and to be glad at his return. He still couldn't seem to shake the feeling that his confusion and fear itself was a sort of divine punishment for having broken his holy vows, but the sin of bedding her seemed eclipsed by the joy of being with her again, and so it was with an uncertain wrinkle of his brow that he finally nodded and gave her an uneasy smile. He saw from the stillness in her pale eyes that she was waiting for him to say something, and so, with a tiny shrug, he spoke up.

"It's just that, well, umm," he stuttered. "I'm not certain, as there's so much we need to..." He fell silent for a moment as he felt temporarily paralyzed by a strange sense of unreadiness. "You and I, that is, we need to..."

Taking his meaning, Brennan looked him directly in the eyes. "Look," she began, her voice a bit more serious as she spoke. "I know," she said. "I do know we still have much to discuss, I promise." She paused for a beat as she raised her head and looked at him as her voice softened slightly. "But, I think we've made a good start on the most important ones, haven't we?"

Booth met her gaze and thought about her point. At last, when she didn't look away, he frowned a bit, some of his resolve melting before he finally answered. "Well," he hedged slightly. "I mean, yes, I agree with you. I think we have, but..."

She nodded at him, quickly dismissing his last few words. "No 'buts', Booth. We're agreed then. We've made a good start." She watched as he opened his mouth to protest, and she quickly shook her head before she made him a counteroffer to offset her curtness. "We're done talking for now. But, later? Tonight?" She nodded at him confidently. "Tonight, I promise, we can talk all you want. But even as much as I wish that I could lay here in bed with you all afternoon and into the promising hours of this evening," she said, a suggestive smile on her lips. "I do have to get back to the shop." She breathed a heavy sigh. "There's still much work that remains to be done before the day's business is over. And, then, there's still the matter of how we're going to handle my family."

"Oh," he said, wincing a little as he once again became dimly aware of the burn he felt each time he raised or furrowed his brow. He reached up and touched the slightly swollen spot over his eye where the blood clumped over his eyebrow. Grunting softly, he wondered if the cut would leave a scar. "We?" he asked. "Right—because that whole thing with your father earlier went resoundingly well."

She rolled her eyes and let out a small sigh as she sat up. "Yes, well, it could have gone better," she admitted. "Be that as it may, I still have to figure out what we're going to say to my father."

Booth turned to lay on his side and propped his head in his hand as his gaze swept over her belly and the swell of her bare bosom and settled on her eyes for a few long seconds before falling once more to the beautiful shape of her child-swollen abdomen. He felt his heart skip a beat as he quickly reached his hand over to touch it, barely grazing her skin with his fingertips, then nodding to himself and pulling his hand away again.

"He must know," he said quietly. "I mean, that I am the father of this child." He frowned a bit as she shook his head. "It's not as if he can't count off his fingers. Your father may be a lot of things, Bren, but he's not an idiot. Surely he knows."

Brennan let out another breath, a half sigh, before she answered his unspoken question. "I've never told him," she said, her voice clear and strong. "If that's what you're asking, hmm?" She paused as she waited for Booth to give a minute nod in response to her question. "He was so angry," she further explained, a bit of rumination coming into her voice as she spoke. "When he kept asking me, you see? And, I'd be lying if I said that he didn't get angrier each time he asked me and each time I kept refusing to name the father." She paused for a beat as she flashed Booth a wry smile. "And, you thought you were skilled at asking questions, hmm? Well, let me assure you. If my father had been my inquisitor instead of you, he might've actually gotten a confession from me. Almost, anyway."

Booth's dark eyes narrowed skeptically at her words. He made a face at her, a look of clear annoyance shining on his face before he responded verbally. "So you say," he grumbled. "I doubt he's half the interrogator that I am. I mean, I was _very_ good at what I did, Bren."

Brennan shot him a look, her own mild irritation tempered somewhat at hearing his cocky side emerge again. "That's why I said _almost_. But you above all people should know that I never do anything I don't want to do, don't you, Booth?"

"Heh," he chuckled, his lips parting in a crooked grin as some of his former annoyance disappeared from his face. "That I do," he nodded at her. "And I know how amazing you can be when you set your mind to doing something, or to having something you want, mmm?" He tried to coax a smile from her with a waggle of his brow, which he hoped would delay the inevitable discussion of her father.

"Well, in either case," she told him, her tone turning more serious again. "I knew I couldn't give my father definitive confirmation of your identity because if I did, I knew he would want to kill you, and knowing my father, he'd probably make a pretty damn good faith attempt to pull it off. So, that's why I refused to tell him whose child it was that I carried." She saw Booth's Adam's apple bob in his throat as he swallowed and smiled faintly at how her father could intimidate a much younger, stronger man. "Although, I'm sure, after today, well—I'm fairly certain he knows."

"Do you still think he going to try and kill me?" he asked, his voice more curious than nervous as he reached up and ruffled his fingers over the spiky strands of sweat-damp hair on the back of his head. He pondered his own question for a moment. Twice already he'd found himself on the receiving end of Matthew's violent hostility—once in the stables at Lambeth Palace when the wily old apothecary's dagger had pressed hard against Booth's jugular, then again, not a half hour after reuniting with Brennan, when her father drilled him with a hard right hook so hard it knocked Booth off his feet. That said, the flutter of anxiety he felt at the prospect of confronting Matthew again was less a question of not being physically able to hold his own against the older man—though he hoped he'd never again have to feel the cold steel of Matthew's blade against his throat—and more a concern that the enmity between him and Brennan's father would in some way alienate Brennan's affections for him, which is something he knew he wanted to avoid at all costs.

_Perhaps I'm being a fool, _he told himself as he watched as Brennan's eyes drifted over his shoulder to the window behind him. _This is silly. I mean, Bren's father is just doing what any father in his position would do, how any good father would react if he'd had to deal with what he's faced given what's happened to his daughter. I mean, he's probably doing the exact same thing I would do if I were in his place... _

Another thought suddenly occurred to him when he realized that he probably wouldn't be able to help himself from putting a dagger in the belly of any man who did such a thing to the child Brennan was carrying, were it to turn out that the child was a girl. The thought was utterly sobering to him and he blanched a bit, swallowing heavily as he wondered if perhaps, as Brennan had claimed on more than one occasion, he and Matthew Brennan really were more alike then he maybe wanted to admit. _And if that's so, then maybe I do need to be worried._

The sudden shift in her attention plucked Booth out of his own thoughts. He followed her gaze out the window and realized then that there was a room of some kind above the shop. Blinking away the new source of his distraction, he pressed her on his question. "I mean, he wouldn't, right?" he asked.

Brennan glanced out the window and, though she knew the diamond-shaped pattern in the leaded window gave her a fair amount of privacy even in the light of day from someone looking up from the courtyard, leaned over to grab her linen shift which hung off the corner of the bed where she'd tossed it when she took it off earlier.

"He might want to, perhaps just on principle," she said as she pulled her shift over her head. "But I think he's at least going to think twice about trying anything."

"Hmm," the ex-priest murmured, his brows knitting over his eyes as he remembered the rage he saw flash in her father's blue eyes the second before he felt the older man's fist smash into his face. "And, why's that?"

She smiled at him as she said, "Well, I think that today you proved that you're not one just to turn the other cheek, despite your affinity for the New Testament. Ex-priest or no, you fought back when he struck you. And you've done it on more than one occasion."

Booth quirked an eyebrow, nibbling the inside of his lip as he recalled his first encounter with her angry, dagger-wielding father in the archbishop's stables at Lambeth Palace. _"I don't...know...what...you're...talking about," _he remembered panting as he felt the blade's edge press into the soft, unbearded spot on the side of his neck. _"But...if you'll sheathe...your weapon and tell me who you are, I'm sure...we can discuss this matter...calmly and without fear of either one of us...shedding any blood unnecessarily." _He recalled looking into Matthew's eyes and seeing not a glint of mercy. _ "If you're going to slit my throat...don't you think I at least deserve to know what I did first? For the love of God, man. Please."_

He swallowed a little and blinked away the thought as his eyes swiveled back up to meet hers again as the memory faded, and he decided not to contradict Brennan's apparent understanding of the first conversation he'd had with her father. He saw no reason that she needed to know the fear he'd felt when her father's blade dug into his neck that morning—in fact, he'd just as well she thought he had fought the old man off instead of more or less begging for his mercy—and so, all things considered, he knew it was best to let sleeping dogs lie.

"So," she continued, "although I'm quite certain he'd never admit it openly to you...or to anyone for that matter, I do think my father respects that about you, in an ironic sort of way."

Booth arched an eyebrow as he said, "Respect what? Because of all the things I've learned about your father, I wouldn't say that there's a single thing he respects about me."

She shook her head. "You're wrong," she told him. "I happen to know for a fact, the type of man you are? That you would fight for me? Because you care for me? And that you want to protect me and our family? I know he values those things himself and so would respect the same values in a man like you. Besides," she paused for a beat. "If nothing else, I firmly believe that he respects your stubbornness, I think." She smirked. "He recognizes in your stubbornness and willingness to fight back the same things he prides in himself."

"Hmmm," Booth murmured as he sat up and threaded his fingers through his sweat-damp hair. He looked at her for a moment, smiling faintly at the way her thin linen shift clung to the curves of her body and at the thin wisps of sweaty hair around her temples that formed tiny, damp reddish curls against the luminous glow of her porcelain skin in the cloud-dimmed afternoon light. Drawing his legs up towards his chest, he balanced his arms across the tops of his knees and leaned forward, nothing the way their clothes were scattered on the mat woven of corded rushes that covered the floor of her room. For a moment, Booth kept staring at the floor and wondered whether the old apothecary would consider himself to have anything in common with a defrocked papist priest. "Maybe," he said noncommittally. "However, I suppose I should, nonetheless, watch my back."

Brennan shrugged. "In either case, I'll still speak to him," she said. "It's the right thing to do. And you'll probably need to speak to him, too, eventually."

"I know," Booth grumbled. "I'm not looking forward to it, but settling my debts with Matthew Brennan is something I've known I was going to have to do for a long while now."

Brennan cocked her head a bit askance as she puzzled over his remark. _Settling debts? _she mused. _What kind of debt could he possibly owe my father? And for what? _She wiggled her fingers and troubled with the hem of his shift, which was bunched up over her knee as she sat on the bed with her legs curled under her. _What happened between them that day at Lambeth? _she wondered. _I know my father never cared one bit for anyone related to the Inquisition, but still, this level of hostility is distinctly irrational. _She shook away the thought and reached up to tuck a damp strand of hair behind her ear.

"Possibly," she finally answered with an ambivalent shrug."But, in the meantime," she said with an arched eyebrow. "You might—"

"Keep a dagger in my boot," he interjected grimly, no trace of a smile on his face to indicate he was joking in any way. "Not that I don't already."

Nodding her approval, Brennan let out a small breath before she spoke again. "Might be a good plan," she said. "At least until Father gets used to the idea."

"And who knows how long that will take, if ever," Booth said with a sigh. "In either case," he paused as he looking up at the timbered ceiling and crossed himself. "God help me."

* * *

**A/N: **_There you have it. Our couple has a lot of things still to talk about, but it seems that now they've broached a couple of the major issues that were looming between them. But before the two of them can do anything else, Brennan needs to go have a chat with her father. Could be a bit awkward, given all that's happened between Brennan, Booth and Matthew, don't you think? Of course it will be, which makes for good reading. We promise that the next chapter will post without anywhere near the delay there was in getting this one up for you..._

_In the meantime, please tell us what you think (and let us know that, despite our delay in getting this chapter up, you're still interested in seeing where the story goes). This story, like its predecessor "The Inquisitor," is more or less unique in the world of Bones fanfiction and the decision we made to write it involved a bit of a leap on faith on our part (never mind the very substantial research we've done to make this tale as accurate in the details as possible). Please, let us know you're out there reading this crazy thing and tell us what you think so far. It only takes a minute but it means so much to hear from our readers, especially for a piece like this that is way, WAY out in left field._

_Oh, and if you're on Twitter, you should know that someone else is now on Twitter: _**Lesera128** _has finally decided to join the madness. Her Twitter handle is_ **HRHLesera128** _so look her up and give her a follow_.

_In any event, thanks for reading. We really appreciate each and every one of you._

**Editorial note****: **_We strongly encourage you to do a Google search for Andreas Vesalius and/or his tome _De Humani Corporis Fabrica_. There are several websites that show images of what the book's drawings looked like. We think you may find it interesting to see what the cutting edge of medical/anatomical knowledge was on the eve of the Scientific Revolution, which many historians argue began in 1543 with the publication of that book as well as Nicolaus Copernicus' _De revolutionibus orbium coelestium_ (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) that same year. It was in the early sixteenth century that people began to understand the world in terms of reason, knowledge and science as opposed to belief, superstition and myth. By the middle of the 17th century, men like Vesalius, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo Galilei, Sir Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Franciscus Vieta, Sir Isaac Newton and Antoine van Leeuwenhoek completely changed the world. You might also be interested in a book called _The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution _which highlights the role that the alchemists, gardeners, barber/surgeons and (yes!) apothecaries and midwives of London played in cultivating new attitudes about knowledge and experimentation._


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